


Home by the Sea

by BlindManBaldwin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2020-09-07 16:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20312536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindManBaldwin/pseuds/BlindManBaldwin
Summary: A struggling girl is called to a faraway island by a mysterious man—with promises of finding everything she's ever wanted in life. As she digs deeper, she finds what she really needs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A broken man reflects on failures. He relives the past and his folly; suffering all over again.

The sun broke out over the water, illuminating the promise of the new day. 

The horizon kissed the sea, reflecting onto the rocky shoreline the unity of the heavens and the earth. 

The ocean wind carried all the smells of the sea to the land, joining together the seas and the land. 

If paradise existed somewhere in the galaxy, it would be right here. 

Or at least, it should have been. 

An old man slumped out of bed, carrying the pain and desolation of a lifetime worth of mistakes. He got out of his shack to stare off into the distance—to see the cycle of life continuing on. Even though he was alone on this rock, he still put on a hood to hide himself from the world and the light of the sun. 

In his younger years, he traveled throughout the stars—hoping one day to find a planet like this. A planet to call home; a planet where he could bring back what had been lost to the evils of his time. 

The dream died at his hands. 

Grabbing his spears, the man walked down the scree to go to the beach to spearfish. At the start of each week, he made spears out of rocks, logs, and twine. He used them to pluck the fish out of the sea. If the island had another source of food—as all the vegetation made him sick—he wouldn’t kill another creature. He never dared to hunt a porg, for they reminded him too much of the innocence he stole. 

He didn’t have to look the fish in the eye.

Spearfishing reminded him of shooting the womp rats in his youth back home. As a boy, his aim was the stuff of legends. As a man, it became his way of liberating the world. As an elder, it bore his claim to shame. 

“Hmmmmph,” He grunted. It took all the focus in his weary body to line the spear up properly with the fish. He didn’t want to cause any pain. He didn’t want the fish to linger in life. Just a clean shot to provide him with enough food for the day. He only ate the bare minimum to survive. But he didn’t know why he did that; why he continued to fuel life.

The body has a unique capacity to keep living even when the spirit has been long dead. 

“There,” He barked, taking the fish off the spear and putting into his bag. He marched up the opposite slope to go to his one place of spiritual solace on the island. 

Leaving his bag and cloak outside, the man entered into a tree just as he did every day. The tree stood unchanged for a thousand generations. The dusty wood and aged surfaces reminded him of himself: useless, purposeless, antique, relic. 

Sitting with his knees in the dirt, the man closed his eyes and tried to focus on the sounds of nature surrounding him. He tried to gain a sliver of peace. 

But he never succeeded. He always felt nothing. Not cold or warm, light or dark, good or evil, this or that—but nothing. A complete absence of life. 

Except today.

The old man felt anger, rage, fear—all things he worked a lifetime to suppress and ignore. The sense of nothingness left him. In its place, a vision of his old life greeted him. 

“No,” He whispered. “I can’t...don’t make me go through this again.” 

His pleading got him nowhere; his source of pain would be renewed once more.

_ For years, Luke thought his sister overreacted when she warned him about her son; he thought her fears were nothing. He didn’t believe what her frantic messages told him: that her son’s tantrums became violent, that her son’s sadness coupled with her feeling a deep cold, that as he grew in size his anger and strength grew with him. One school kicked him out, and another, and another. If it wasn’t for all the goodwill she and Han had in the galaxy, the boy would have been sent to prison.  _

_ But still, things weren’t all bad. Leia knew he was a smart kid, who could pilot a ship just a good as his father. He had a big heart and tried to do better, but something worked within him—something that churned his soul; that pushed him to darkness. She and Han didn’t know what to do, so they turned to Luke—who always had all the answers. _

_ As he slowly became a man, Luke took a larger role in his nephew’s life. Eventually, Leia decided that the boy needed to go off with Luke, to control his power and become a Jedi.  _

_ “I’m ignorant of the Force,” she told Luke, “only you have the knowledge to help my son.”  _

“I never should’ve trained him,” The man said. “I should have listened. He had too much power.” 

The sunny day on the island became overrun with clouds; dark and deep, rich with storms and power. 

_ Luke wasn’t a great teacher; he barely made headway with the few students he had. But he knew he had to help his family out, so he’d try to be better. So he took up Ben after his 12th birthday and spent the next decade trying to teach him the ways of the Force.  _

_ Eventually, his power and skill grew to surpass Luke or the other students. Ben felt he had a purpose and a meaning in life. He felt like he belonged to a community. The darkness sank away. _

_ But danger bubbled below the surface.  _

_ Whenever he couldn’t master something, he grew angry. His saber technique, while proficient, was defined by aggression. A time or two, he went beyond the limits on his sparring partner. He struggled to empathize with his peers and their struggles. While the other students loved to keep in contact with their parents, Ben grew increasingly distant from Han and Leia. The boy could hardly sleep. His face grew increasingly gaunt, he lost weight. His hair, so lustrous and full of life, had begun to fade and weaken. Dark circles grew larger under his eyes.  _

_ As time went on, Ben grew more reclusive of the other students. He stopped going to lessons. He hardly spoke to Luke—sticking instead to his books and writings. Luke’s concern magnified for the boy after secretly reading some of these writings, which detailed the tortured and troubled soul within. The good days became more and more infrequent before fading away permanently.  _

“It didn’t have to be this way,” The old man said, clutching his cane. The sides of the tree began to shake. The books adorning the walls, all the remained of his old life, fell off their shelves. A storm began to well up on the island. Torrential rains quickly flooded the low-lying areas, while the winds knocked around all sorts of debris. 

“I could’ve stopped this…”

_ One night, a nightmare plagued Luke’s mind—one where his nephew’s anger took over and caused him to do horrible things. Chaos. Destruction. Murder. The fear took hold of Luke and he, almost unconsciously, went to Ben’s hut to look into his mind as the boy restlessly slept. Luke’s fears were realized. The boy dreamed of killing Luke. Of killing his peers. Of killing his father.  _

_ Luke had to do something—the vision seemed so real; Luke feared for his best friend’s life. He feared for the safety of his students. A thousand lives could be lost if Luke failed to act.  _

_ But he couldn’t kill his nephew. He loved him. Every time he looked at the boy, he saw his father’s face and his mother’s smile—his grandfather’s hair. To kill his nephew would be to kill his family.  _

“I thought it would help,” The old man cried, tears rolling down his face. “I thought I would stop a return to darkness.” He clenched his fist. The storms grew more and more intense. Darkness began to swallow the sky. The waves crashed aggressively on the island, breaking off rocks into the sea. The ground beneath him began to shake. Branches of the tree started snapping off. 

_ Luke trembled and sweat as he walked out Ben’s hut, uncertain of what he would do. His hand shook as it never had before—his brain lost control of his mechanical hand. His vision grew foggy, his thoughts wandered.  _

_ The pitch-black night painted the moment perfectly. Luke can’t remember ever feeling so cold, feeling embraced by a surrounding darkness so much before in his life. Not when he fought his father. Not when he saw Obi-Wan die. Not when he faced death. _

_ Entering the hut again, Luke stopped for one last second—still not knowing what he needed to do. He grabbed his lightsaber for a moment, then put it back. Grabbing it again, and putting it back. Grabbing it a third time, he thought about throwing it as far as he could.  _

The storm reached a fervor unmatched before on the island. The forces ripped greenery and rocks out of their resting places, upsetting the natural balance of the island. Despite it being noon, the world went pitch black. 

_ But he didn’t. The terror controlled him. Luke ignited the blade. The green glow illuminated Ben’s young and perfectly innocent face. His eyes opened as he reached for his saber, in a futile attempt to engage his assailant.  _

_ It didn’t matter. The deed was done. With a stab to the heart leaving the mark of a diamond, Ben Solo was dead.  _

_ The last thing Ben saw were his master’s eyes—full of regret and shame. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Chapter updates will be Monday/Thursday/Saturday for the next 5 weeks. A lot of influences went into this story, but there are a few I'd like to highlight beyond Star Wars. The title is borrowed from a 1983 Genesis song about a haunted house and a treasure hunt—the story shares nothing literal to the song, but the general tone (at places) is heavily inspired by it. There's also some sprinkles of "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword" and "East" throughout.
> 
> This introductory chapter is sort of disconnected to the rest of the story, but then again this chapter contains everything you need to know for the whole story—it'll be important to keep this in mind. As for this chapter specifically, I think the driving emotion is guilt. There's a lot of that throughout this story—how do we deal with guilt, how do we reconcile guilt. No one has all the answers and no one is perfect. We're all going to make mistakes in life, that's just being human. But what do we do afterwards? What do we do when confronted with pain? These questions will drive the remaining 14 chapters as our heroine's story begins on Thursday.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl, living out her mundane and routine existence, finds her life turned upside down by a voice calling out to her and a strange Man in Black.

“Rey…..” A voice called out. “Rey!” 

The dream, the same dream which the girl had seen her entire life, replayed itself again; it always had the same flow. 

The voice, sometimes male and sometimes female, would call out to her. She’d open her eyes and find herself on a beautiful planet, full of water and life. Sometimes she would see figures in the shape of her, but not always. When she did, there would always be two: a man and a woman. The man had beautiful, long black hair. The woman looked just like Rey—only older and with more wisdom and strength in her eyes. She’d run towards the voice

She knew these people in her dreams were her parents. Rey didn’t know why they left her on Jakku or why they never came back for her, but they must have had their reasons. She could tell from the visions they were good people who wouldn’t do something like that without being forced to it. These memories provided her solace and companionship in the desolation of the desert. 

One day, they would return and liberate from this hell. 

While she waited for salvation, she carved out a life as a scavenger—finding value in the wastes of a long-gone war. Each day had the same routine to it: put on her sand-colored robes and mask to protect and camouflage her in the desert, trek out deep into the wasteland to find enough valuable scrap to sell for her daily bread, and get back to shelter before the desert turned to night. At night, when the sun set, the desert quickly turned to a fatal cold. But the hot sun beating down could be just as fatal. 

The girl in her shelter, nothing more than a broken-down and busted-up AT-AT from the Battle of Jakku. It came from a time long before her own. The metal began to weather and age thanks to the harsh Jakku sandstorms, but the sturdy materials would hold up long after the coating began to grow scarred and worn. The remnants of the war provided shelter and a livelihood for many on Jakku. Rey’s source of water came from an Imperial pump buried deep in the ground that she collected in Rebellion canteens. She always kept 13 canteens of water filled at all times; since childhood nothing scared her more than that pump running out.

She did not own a lot beyond the essentials for survival. One of her few possessions was a nearly-wilted plant, which she remembers being there as long as she can remember. It took precious water to keep it alive, but Rey felt a connection to the dull shade of green within its leaves. The plant was not native to Jakku; Rey always assumed her parents left it for her. 

It remained her one connection to them.

She also had a Rebellion-era helmet that she carved her name into as a young girl. When she felt particularly lonely, Rey put the helmet on to pretend she was off on some foreign world flying a clean ship. A few dolls and other assorted trinkets she picked up over the years. Most noticeable was the larger wall of the Walker dedicated to marking each day. Rey marked every day she lived in this home and knew one day she would cross it off for the last time. 

Putting on her mask, Rey got on her speeder and went into the wastes to start her day’s work. A few days earlier she made a monumental discovery—a preservered and unscanvaged Star Destroyer. This kind of craft had numerous instance of rare and highly valuable technology; she could get weeks of food from the salvage of this one haul. It was miraculous no one had entered it yet. Rey couldn’t believe herself when she found it, sitting abandoned and unsullied for decades. Using one of her robes, a necessity for any scavenger, she scaled down into the Star Destroyer through one of its ventilation shafts. 

Rey didn’t know if anyone else was there in the Star Destroyer. Tremendous danger lurked in every dark corner. No one on Jakku was friendly. In a world this harsh, everyone could only look out for themselves—there was no compassion here, no one helped one another. Other scavengers would want the find; some would use any means necessary to get it. There could be bandits, who would rob the scavengers of their hard work. There also could be ferals, people who lived deep in the desert and fought anything that came near them. Over the years, Rey had to fight off many would-be assailants with her trusty staff—which she built herself out of spare parts from the AT-AT and other Imperial hardware. 

Besides the light emanating from her spotty headlamp, the Star Destroyer was completely dark. She could barely see once her rope hit the cold and sandy bottom of the cavern. The light illuminated only the dust in the air. Her mask filtered out most of the dust, but these working conditions proved tiring—Rey figured she only had a couple of hours to search the Star Destroyer before her lungs grew tired of the constant coughing. Looking around, Rey broke off anything that looked shiny or repurposable. On Jakku, what an item did in the past mattered less than what it could be turned into. 

Rey broke off a few pieces from a computer deck on the ship—nothing too fancy, but it would get her a few days worth of food before continuing on. She moved into the central area of the ship, where the hole she entered from was. 

“What was that?” Rey’s head jerked—she heard rattling in a nearby ventilation shaft. “Is someone there?” She clutched her staff close and her scrap closer.

“Rey,” It called out. “Rey!”

“Hello…” She answered, putting her head into the shaft. She didn’t know whether this was a sign of heat exhaustion setting in, so she pulled her head out and took a sip of water.

“Rey!” The voice called again, this time louder. “Rey, go to the planet Ahch-To,” It commanded. 

“Who’s there?” She grabbed her staff and entered into the ventilation shaft.

“On Ahch-To, you will find what you need.” 

“Ahch-To?” She said. “What’s that?”

But the voice was gone.

Rey exited the ship with enough salvage with enough food for two weeks. Starvation meant doom in the unrelenting torture of the desert, so Rey tried to keep a supply on hand. As Rey unloaded her salvage onto her speeder, she looked up to the sky. 

“Ahch-To…” She said under her breath, pulling the craft into the camp. “Why does that sound familiar?” 

A couple of people in the main camp on Jakku were soldiers who were abandoned after the war. One was an Imperial officer, the other a former Rebel pilot. Their respective armies never came back to save them, so they had to find a new war in each other. The two were inseparable and could always be found by the one functioning radio on the planet—bickering away about the state of the galaxy.

“Did you hear that the New Republic routed out the last enclaves of the First Order?” The Rebel said to the Imperial. “That Hux fellow was arrested and will be facing trial.”

“They just don’t have leadership, they don’t have power,” The Imperial said. “We had Vader and they had no one. Hux was a fool. Ah well, I suppose it’s good the last vestiges of the Empire are gone. They would have done it all wrong anyway.”

Rey didn’t really pay too mention attention to their debates of old wars and politics. She didn’t care too much about what happened on other planets. She couldn’t even fathom there were people on other planets if they continued to allow suffering to happen on worlds like Jakku. 

Her parents weren’t like that, though. They were the good people in the galaxy.

Rey walked towards Unkar Plutt’s stand to sell her wares. As she waited in line, she sipped some water from her canteen. A man dressed in black sitting at one of the tables got up and pushed his way through the line. His black clothes surprised Rey—no one wore black on Jakku. He had a mask on his face, so he had to be an off-worlder not used to the coarseness of the sandy winds.

“Excuse me!” Rey exclaimed, pointing her hand to the back. “I was here first, you need to go to the back of the line.”

“I’ve seen you pilot that speeder,” The man said. He pointed towards Rey’s craft a few clicks away. “You got some nice skills.” 

He leaned in closer to Rey. “What’s a girl like you doing on a rock like this?” 

The Man’s voice crackled with every word he spoke. Rey knew, through scavenging, some of the old Imperial masks had built-in voice modulators. Yet this voice didn’t sound like a modulator—it sounded like something else entirely. 

It sounded like death.

“I said back of the line,” Rey barked. She grabbed her staff and shoved the man to the ground. “And don’t talk to me.”

“Ok, ok, ok, I see how it is,” The man answered. He brushed the sand off his black robe, put on his hood, and started walking away. “But if you ever want to go to Ahch-To, you know where to find me.”

“Ahch-To?” Rey said, thinking of the voice she heard during his last haul. “Wait!” But the man had already left.

Rey walked up to the stall and put her find on the counter.

“Hmmm…” Unkar Plutt guttered. The disgusting Crolute had been on Jakku seemingly forever. He was a very greedy creature, who only cared about money. 

From a young age, Rey feared him. He never would simply give Rey food or basic supplies, but always make her work for them—regardless of how dangerous the tasks were. He collected all the supplies from the scavengers on Jakku and took them off-world to sell. In exchange, he gave the scavengers the bare minimum necessary to survive. The people were so hungry and tired they had no choice but to give into this oppressive system. 

“Well,” Rey interceded. “How much is it? Five portions? Six?” 

“I think,” He took some of the parts in his hand to inspect closer. He entered some information into a computer terminal behind him. “One portion. No more”

“But a week ago the same part was worth two?”

“And now it’s worth one. Or would you rather try your luck elsewhere?” 

Rey looked at the materials scattered about across the counter.For years she’s been slaving away on Jakku for nothing but basic sustenance, waiting for her parents. Maybe she needed to go to Ahch-To. Maybe that’s where her parents were. 

“Yes,” She said, grabbing her haul and putting it back in her bag. “We deserve more portions, we’re doing all the hard work.” 

The Man in Black, now several kilometers away, heard the anger in Rey’s voice and snickered to himself. 

“Perfect,” He whispered. A smirk grew on his face. 

“We’re not your slaves! We deserve fair treatment!” Rey reached over the counter and grabbed two portions, leaving behind the item worth that much. She grabbed her staff from the ground and tied her haul to her back. 

“Girl!” Plutt yelled, insulted and shocked by her display of resistance. “You are banned from this stand forever, you’ll never eat on this planet.”

Rey aggressively turned around and glared at the man. Seeing his computer behind him—the computer which spat out the price, the computer which made her life so tough—Rey knew what she had to do. 

Without saying a word, Rey took her staff and reached over the counter and smashed his computer. For a brief while, those oppressive numbers wouldn’t continue to crush spirit of the people of Jakku.

Rey stormed off in a hurry, fearful of the consequences of her defiant actions. Before Plutt could order the patrons to fire on her, she was long gone on her speeder. 

“Everyone!” He screamed. “If that girl ever shows her face around here again, I’ll give you 100 portions for her head!” 

As night began to fall on Jakku, Rey arrived at her shelter—hungry, but proud. For the first time in her life, Rey had chosen her own destiny. 

“Ugh,” She said to herself. The stomach growls reminded her that it may not be wise, immediately, to bite the hand that feeds. “I’ll go to sleep and see what I can do tomorrow. I know there’s some game on the other side of the mountains, perhaps I can become a hunter.” Rey secured her hut from the incoming cold winds and went to sleep.

Rey’s eyes opened and she found herself on an island—with a great ocean clashing at its banks. Within a moment, she realized she was dreaming. She’d seen this island before, usually she was here with her parents. Everyone was happy and joyous in their bond. 

But this wasn’t that.

She was alone. 

Clouds were rumbling in from overhead, but in her previous dreams the sun shined brightly. There was no cool, refreshing ocean breeze. Instead a harsh, salty wind bombarded her. Water fell from the sky onto her, a feeling completely foreign to Rey. 

“Where am I?” Rey asked. “Where are they?” Rey heard a strange noise behind her and turned around. A hole opened in the ground beneath her feet; a large cloud of black smoke bellowed out. The smoke blew underneath a small rock formation, coalescing into the shape of a man.

It was the Man in Black. 

“Wait...it’s you!” She said. Only now did Rey realize how massive the man; his height dwarfed Rey and he possessed enough muscles to kill her with his bare hands. Even though they weren’t on Jakku, his mask was still on. “Why are you here, where are my parents?” 

She started backing up before hitting a tree. “I said leave me alone!” She reached for her staff but it couldn’t be found. Instead, she grabbed her canteen and spilled a bit on the man—hoping that’d buy her some time to escape. 

“Gah!” He screamed, as he aggressively fanned away at his robe. Tiny puffs of smoke came up from where the water fell. 

Rey had never seen a man so hurt by water before. 

“Don’t like water, do you?” She said. “Well, I see why you were on Jakku. You’ll not find a dryer place in the galaxy.”

“Hahahha,” His laugh sounded faker than any she’d heard before. “So why are you on Jakku?” 

Rey wouldn’t answer him—fearful and confused by the sight of the man in her dream. Yet, something about him allured her; something about him intrigued her to learn more.

He responded with his own silence, spending several moments staring her down. She couldn’t see his eyes through the mask, but she could feel their coldness.

“Oh,” He said. “You want to find your parents, that’s what it is? That’s why you’ve stayed there all those years?” 

“How did you know that?”

“You’re so ignorant, so blissfully and adorably ignorant” He said. “They’d only disappoint you. But whatever, I know where they are.”

“Really? You do?” She asked. “Wait…”

“What, don’t you want to see them? See the people who left you in your hellscape?” 

“No, I...this is a dream! You aren’t real!”

“Ah, you’ll soon find I can do many things that aren’t real.” The Man got closer to Rey and appeared to touch her hair. She preemptively recoiled at what she expected to be the cold touch of his glove. But at the last moment, he pulled his hand back. 

“Go to Ahch-To, and all your dreams will become a reality,” He said. 

“Why should I listen to you?” She asked. “What do you know about me?

“I know you’re angry,” He said. “I know what you did today to Plutt’s computer. You were only right. He wasn’t treating you fairly. You treated him just as he treats anyone else on Jakku, it’s only natural.”

“I just wanted to get back at him for a lifetime of pain,” Rey answered. “Now, why are you here in my dream?”

“Ah, Rey. You still don’t see the point,” He remarked. “A ship is leaving from Jakku bound for the other side of the galaxy. It’s a large freighter, looks pretty worn down. Has a large bird logo on the side. You’ll find it in the spaceport. Wretched little planet you have…” 

The Man paced around a bit, circling around Rey like a predator stalking prey. 

“I believe there will be a few old guys sitting out front—a mix of aliens and humans. Sneak aboard. Or try to get a job, I hear they need a mechanic. Or offers some...other services. It doesn’t matter how you get on, just get on the ship and get to Ahch-To”

“Hijack a vessel?” Rey asked.

“You’re quite cunning and ambitious,” He said. Rey couldn’t tell whether he meant that or not. “But perhaps you overestimate yourself too much. Or maybe not? I’d love to be proven wrong about you...perhaps you’ll be the one.”

He turned way from Rey and began walking back into the fog. “Once aboard the ship, use your anger to find your way to Ahch-To. However you do it doesn’t matter.” 

“But, what if my parents come back while I’m gone?” Rey asked the man. “I’ve never been off world before.”

“We all have our first time,” He said, fading away back into the rocks. “Go to Ahch-To, Rey…”

“Ahhh!” Rey screamed, now awake on her cot. Feeling around herself as she tried to reorient herself with consciousness, she discovered her surroundings were damp—as if the water in her dream actually fell onto her. A salty taste pervaded throughout her mouth. 

Putting her clothes on for the daily trek into the desert, Rey took a moment to stop before she left her hut. She looked at the plant, wilting and dying as it searched throughout the heat for water. She watered the plant with the last bit of her canteen. 

“Should I find this ship?” Rey looked at the dried-out blossom of the flower. Beneath all the decay she still saw some color. “Maybe my parents have been on this island all along?” 

Rey grabbed her staff and looked out one of her makeshift windows to watch the neverending sandstorms of Jakku pass by her. The sun shined bright and hot; it scorched all the land beneath. Jakku was a planet complete without water. To Rey, the worst thing about living in the desert was the unrelenting dryness. The resiliency of her little flower inspired her. 

“But still,” She said, waving her staff around. “I can’t leave here. This is my home. They’re looking for me here, not on Ahch-To or anywhere else. I don’t even know if this ship is real. It’s just a dream…” 

Rey sat down on the bare metal floor of the Walker cross-legged, with her staff beside her. She looked at one her dolls—her only company growing up—and imagined the doll to be a person. 

“Why can’t I shake this dream from my head?” She asked. 

Once more, Rey looked out the window to see the sandstorm continue to dominate the skies. Travel of any kind would be impossible as long as the storm continued. If there was a ship bound for the other side of the galaxy, it wouldn’t be leaving for a while. 

“Not until the storm, I can think until the storm is gone…” Rey said. Her hunger grew more intense. 

“Of course, the ship would have food. And Plutt promised to make sure I’ll never eat again. The animals, well they’d all be hiding during the storm. I couldn’t hunt them anyway.” 

Rey looked back at the dolls and stood up. Using a broken piece of glass as a mirror, she tied her hair into her buns and grabbed her cloak.

“I think, I think I have no choice. At least temporarily, right?” She knew what she had to do, but now she had to rationalize it to herself. “I’ll board the ship, make a little money, go to Ahch-To, and just see what’s there. If no one’s there, I’ll just leave and go back to Jakku. With the money I make on the ship…”

Rey thought to herself about everything she could do with a fortune. “I could make sure Plutt can hurt no one ever again. I could make sure all the children on Jakku are taken care of and sheleted and fed and clothed.” 

Kneeling down, she picked up her favorite doll. It bore the design of a Rebellion pilot. As a small girl, she found it aboard some crashed X-Wing. Plutt said it wasn’t worth anything and he would burn it rather than let someone take, but Rey snuck it away and took it back with her. Some of her earliest memories involve her pretending the doll was a friend. 

“I promise I’ll return,” She told the doll. “Believe me.” 

The storm faded away and the skies cleared up. Rey put on her hood and grabbed her staff, leaving the only home she’s known for a long time. The one benefit of the sandstorms were they buried her Walker in the sand—making them impossible for raiders to find. 

Rey took her first steps away from the walker, up the sand dune hill, and looked behind her. Within a few steps, it would be buried in the sand and lost to her vision. She’d have to trust that everything would be safe and good when she came back. A tear started rolling down her face and she said her last goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I think this chapter is one of the weaker ones in the story—but this (and the next one) are important because they define everything that goes on throughout the story.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey accepts her call from the Man in Black and leaves Jakku. She carries her staff and a bag; as well as a thousand lifetimes of repressed anger.

From a young age, Rey was terrified of traveling through the desert. The desert posed danger due to all the threats lurking in the shadows. 

“But it’s all worth it,” She thought to herself. The sun began its slow ascent onto its peak; it heated up the surface to the normal sweltering heat of Jakku. “Because I’ll see my parents and they’ll take me home.” 

Rey continued hiking through the desert, marching up the sandy slopes and avoiding taking any stumbles. Sometimes, Rey wondered if her parents would even accept her—for she’s lived a life far different than them. Her body bore the scars of being beaten and calloused by the sand; so rough and coarse. 

What if they were beautiful people? What if they wouldn’t accept how ugly she was? The scars of the desert marked every inch of her body. 

What if they were intelligent? Could they accept an ignorant daughter? Rey knew how to live in the desert, but not much beyond that. 

These questions weighed on Rey’s mind as she grew closer and closer to the rickety Jakku spaceport. 

“Maybe it would be better off if I went back home,” She said. “Maybe I should just stay on Jakku and keep waiting. The ship wouldn’t accept me anyway.” Doubt crept into Rey’s mind as she continued to walk through the desert. 

The Man didn’t give her any clues or tips how to get aboard the ship. She had no ideas herself, she never set foot on a ship capable of breaking gravitational force before. She had some trade skills—technical proficiency in various mechanical designs—as well as knowing her way around a set of tools, so perhaps she could be a mechanic. But a ship bound for the other end of the galaxy would surely have a fully-stocked crew. She could sneak aboard as a stowaway, but if she got captured she risked whatever punishment the captain saw fit.

Fear dominated Rey. But her ultimate decision grew closer. Rey knew she had no other choice but to leave the planet. Still, the anxiety overwhelmed her. The sensation took command of her senses. For the briefest moment, she thought about sprinting back to her home and abandoning the quest. 

As she started to hear the low rum of engines harmonizing with the bustle of people, Rey saw two figures grow over the distance. They were a man and woman, who looked just like the figures she dreamed of her entire life.

“Are they here?” Rey said, excitement growing in her voice. 

The two figures walked closer to Rey. As they did that, they merged into one. It was The Man in Black.

“Rey, Rey, Rey, Rey,” He said. “What are you doing?!” As he grew more angry, his voice split into multiple parts—creating a bit of an echo effect.

“I’m walking? To the spaceport?” She answered. Despite his anger, Rey showed no fear towards him. “The one you told me to do?”

“That’s not what I’m asking about,” He replied, walking toward Rey. For a moment, he reached out with his hand. However, just like her dream from last night, he pulled it back—no matter how much he wanted, he couldn’t touch her. “I’m talking about what’s in your head. You are having doubts about going to Ahch-To, aren’t you? Maybe there’s a reason they’ve never come back for you.”

Blood began to flow all throughout Rey’s body. An overwhelming wave of anger swept over her—forcing out her anxious thoughts. 

“Maybe they were right to leave you on the graveyard of a planet,” The Man tried to goad Rey into a reaction. “Maybe you aren’t good enough for your parents.” 

A lifetime of insecurities welled up within Rey; the anger completely took over her body. Grabbing her staff, she thwacked the Man to the ground. Even after he fell, Rey continued attacking him.

“I am good enough, leave me alone!” She screamed. “You don’t know them, you can’t tell me I’m not good enough for them.” 

“Perfect…” The Man whispered. His voice split even further. Rey could distinctly hear a thousand voices come from his lips. The Man faded back away into nothing. 

The situation continued to confuse Rey. She didn’t know if that was real or an image created in her head. The mystery of this Man began to weigh as heavily on her mind as her search for her parents.

Walking closer to the spaceport, Rey contemplated her actions. A shame settled over her—shame for acting in her anger, shame for acting so violently. That wasn’t who Rey wanted to be. She didn’t interact with people a lot on Jakku, but when she did she tried to help people. Try to be kind. She saw all the suffering, all the struggle on her world. She knew one day she’d leave this place, so she wanted to help make it a better place while she could. 

But something about that man, his voice, brought out an anger in her she didn’t know she possessed. Every since she first saw that man at Plutt’s, a frustration and anger dominated Rey’s mind. It made her feel guilty and shameful. 

She needed to get rid of it. 

Entering the spaceport, Rey saw the gaggle of laborers and sailors congregating throughout the wide area. The Jakku Spaceport wasn’t anything remarkable. There were no permanent, stable structures. There was no military protection or defense force of any kind—all ships were in permanent danger. Derelict vessels, some sitting for years if not longer, collected dust right next to ships bound for journeys that day. A lot of ships were dumped here if they got in trouble with the law. Private militaries made up of mercenaries and bounty hunters were a frequent sight on the spaceport. Rey only came her a couple of times before in her life, but the level of traffic never failed to surprise her. She couldn't understand why all these offworlders needed to do business on Jakku. 

Eventually, Rey found a ship matching the description The Man gave her with the crew out in front. He did lie to her about one thing about the ship, though. It wasn’t just any bird, it was the starbird—the symbol of the old Rebellion.

“Hello,” An elderly Twi’lek man said, sitting outside the ship. “How can I help you?”

“Is this a Rebellion ship?” Rey inquired, pointing to the logo on the side. She thought of her treasured helmet which bore the same symbol. 

“Ah well, kind of,” The man answered. “We scrounge together some parts. Some bits and pieces from this ship and that ship and some others laying in the waste here on Jakku. Some Imperial, some Rebellion.”

“Is that all what you wanted to know?” Another man, this one human, asked Rey. 

“Well, can this ship fly? Does it leave Jakku?”

“We occasionally run freight to and from, yes,” The human answered. “But that shouldn’t concern a scavenger like you.”

“Well I also repair things and I heard you need a mechanic?”

The Twi’lek looked confused, the human grew frustrated. “Who told you?”

Rey kept silent.

“Hmm,” The Twi’lek said. “But we do need a mechanic, that much is true. One of our old ones...”

“Did something happen?”

“That’s none of your business!” The man scolded.

“No, no, no, we can tell her,” The Twi’lek said. “One of our younger members disappeared! We couldn’t find any trace of him.”

“Well, I’ll do it. You don’t need to pay me, just let me board the ship and give me passage to wherever your next haul is going.”

“How do we know you aren’t just lying to get aboard the ship?” The human said. “Are you really a mechanic?”

In order to prove her worth, Rey unhooked her staff. 

“See this? I modified this to extend out, fire out an electrical charge, magnetize, and hold emergency supplies in it.”

Looking over the staff, the Twi’lek felt the modifications. His eyes weren’t too good, so he tested her handiwork with feeling. 

“Please,” The human said. “We don’t know this girl, we don’t know where she’s come from. She’s just a scavenger, what can she do for us? Why, I bet you’ve never been off world before, have you?”

“Well…” Rey started. “No, I haven’t. But we all have our first times, right?”

“We cannot have the risk, space does strange things to people on their first trip,” The human said. He leaned into the Twi’lek and whispered something into his ear.

Unknowingly to him, Rey always had an uncanny ability to understand people’s thoughts and feelings regardless of what their words say. She could hear people from far away, no matter how quiet they spoke. She couldn’t explain it

The man mentioned a strange job—one that would take them in a seldom used hyperspace lane, over some long-abandoned trade routes. She heard the word “lost”, but didn’t know what could be lost in space. Was it possible to lose a planet?

“No, no,” The Twi’lek said. “There’s something about her. She does good work. Show her in the ship, into the second engineering room.” 

“Master, I will do as you say. But let it be known that this,” He looked up and down Rey. “Filthy scavenger, will not be treated like the rest of the crew.” 

“Do as you must, for you are the Captain now,” The Twi’lek said. “But she shall be on our ship. There’s something about her…”

Rey grabbed her staff and followed the human into the ship’s entrance. Rey had never been aboard a functioning ship before. The hustle and bustle inside surprised her—all these people crowding the halls of the ship, working at their stations. These people looked to all be in similar condition to Rey: tattered clothes, well-worn faces, frailer appearances. 

As Rey progressed through the ship, she walked by a row of computers where laborers monitored the condition of the cargo aboard the ship. Rey didn’t know what they were hauling, but a coldness fell upon her as she passed each of the workers.

“They feel so...empty,” Rey thought to herself, confused. On Jakku, she never felt this way before. Was this what the human meant by space doing weird things to people? 

But they hadn’t even taken off yet.

“Alright,” The Captain said. “So my Master insisted you join us on this trip. Here is where you will be staying.” He put a code into a door which opened a large, windowless room. 

“This is the second engineering room. The first engineering room has all the important substance of the ship—for real mechanics. Here has all the scrap and waste from previous voyages. Broken parts of the ship, stuff that doesn’t work anymore. Ok? If you can get any of this working, then you did a good job. If not, I’ll dump you at the next planet. Do you have any questions, scavenger?”

“Where are we going? What are we hauling?”

“You aren’t important enough for that information,” He snapped. “Just do what you’re told and stay in this room. Over there is a cot and a washroom, on that side is an escape pod—in case the ship goes down. The escape pod won’t open unless the ship’s main alarm goes off, which is controlled on the bridge. Or unless a sensor detects a malfunction. So you can’t use it to just escape.”

“I wasn’t going to just escape!”

“Yeah, yeah, just like the last twenty scavengers we picked up,” He typed in some information to his datapad and took some pictures of the room. “We’re starting launch procedures. This door only opens from the outside. You’ll be locked in until the ship lands at its final destination. Don’t try to mess with the door, ok? It only opens with my eye.”

Turning Rey’s head, he pointed over to two chutes. “Food will be transported down that chute each day. Do work and you’ll be rewarded. Put your finished products, if you can repair any of this junk, up that chute. And do nothing else with the chutes or the materials. Or the consequences will be dire.”

“Wait, don’t I get—” Before Rey could finish her sentence, the Captain walked out and closed the door. Rey would be all alone once again. 

Unsure of what to do, Rey started tinkering with some of the things left for her. The Twi’lek was honest—all of this stuff had been salvaged from a mix of Rebellion and Imperial ships. She was intimately familiar with all of this stuff and easily got to work repairing some of it. Motivators, convertors, power couplings—all things necessary for a ship to exist in deep space. All of these things were broken and made the ship run less efficiently or pose a risk of accident. It just took a little tender love and care, along with a little elbow grease, and Rey got them all back in working order. 

This routine went on for days. New scrap would come in, she’d repair it and send it back. 

On and on and on. 

The montanty of it all bored Rey. Much like on Jakku, she kept a log of how long she was trapped aboard the ship. She grew lonely on the ship—never speaking to another person, never seeing another face. After a while, she took a few pieces of scrap to fabricate into a sort of doll—reminiscent of the one back on Jakku. She made the figure look like a pilot of some kind, a helmet made out of a piece of plastic bent to the shape of its head, the body made out of scrap metal. It wasn’t much, but it gave Rey something to talk to on a daily basis.

She gave the doll a name, Kira, and made a story in her head for Kira. She was a New Republic pilot whose ship stalled out in the middle of deep space during a hyperspace run. Drifting in space, she was captured by a pirate vessel and about to be sold into slavery. Escaping the ship, she crash landed on Jakku and had to find a way to escape the planet. Stowing away on a cargo ship, Kira hid in the bowels of the engineering room until she ran into Rey. 

Anything to break up her days trapped in deep space.

Sometimes the ship stopped to make drops, sometimes it had to go to refueling stations—she could hear the hideous noise of the pipes flooding with fuel—and sometimes it went on continuously for days on end. Rey worried whether they already passed Ahch-To, if she blew her chance. 

Of course, this didn’t solve her biggest problem—she had no way out. She was locked in her room, much like a prisoner, with no way of escaping the ship. The escape pod only went off in the event of an emergency. She still had to think of a way to leave the ship, but the Man in Black only gave her the vaguest instructions: to use her anger, in whatever shape that may be. 

But she didn’t know what that meant.

Her entire life, Rey tried to not be angry at the world. She tried to not be angry at her parents for leaving her on Jakku. She tried to not be angry at all the torments and struggles she endured in the desert. She tried to not be angry at working since she could walk. She tried to not be angry at always being hungry, always being thirsty, always being tired. 

She tried to focus on the good in life; focus on what she had and what she should be thankful for. She tried to think of how many on Jakku had it worse than her. A lot of people are homeless and live in whatever temporary shelter they can find—or die in the desert nights. A lot of people find themselves victim to raiders, but they knew never to mess with Rey. She tried to think about the parents she had, somewhere, that loved her and she would one day return to. So many orphans on Jakku will never have that opportunity. 

“But what if I don’t?” Rey said, doubt coming back into her mind. “What if they are gone? What if this journey was all for not?” 

Rey paced around her cage, thinking what to do. As the days piled up, the room felt smaller and smaller. She needed to get out of here—somehow, whether to Ahch-To or to Jakku. Or even just somewhere else on the ship. She needed to get that door open. She needed freedom. 

As Rey sent up the next day’s work, she slipped a little holodisk in with it—hoping someone would see the message she recorded. It was nothing important, she just asked if she could get a new requisition of tools to work on some higher-end parts in the room. Rey hoped she’d get someone to deliver the tools.

She got no reply.

The next day, Rey fibbed a bit—talking about how she heard a strange noise from one of the fuel pumps and requesting it be looked at. Surely, with the threat of such a catastrophe, they’d come down and look at it. It was believable. The engineers who received her work would know the fuel pumps run through that room. 

She got no reply.

On the third day, Rey decided to pull out all the stops. She reported on the recording she injured herself working with one of the faulty tools—that they failed to replace—and she needs medical care beyond the simple first aid supplies in her cage. Surely, the engineers wouldn’t be so heartless. They’d show some compassion to her struggle and send a medic down. 

Again, she got no reply.

Disheartened and saddened, Rey went to sleep on her cot. She had to think of something else to get her out of the room. She grew more and more anxious with her enclosure. She felt she’d be squeezed out into space. She began to think the ship would keep going on forever.

“Kira, I’m scared,” She confessed. “Should I have left Jakku? What if I never get back?” 

The doll sat lifeless. Unlike the one on Jakku, Kira lacked a face. 

“I just, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. I listened to that stupid voice in my head. I should never have left. Now look at me, I’m a prisoner. Just like you...”

Rey drifted off to sleep, hoping when she opened her eyes she was back in her home on Jakku. She’d go back scavenging, go back waiting for her parents. 

Or maybe she’d dream herself on the island, with her parents. Free from space, free from the Man in Black.

Or maybe he’d be there...

“Wake up!” A presence jolted her awake. “You’ve been lying to us, there is no pump leak!” The Captain yelled.

“W-what?” She said, sleep still in her eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Those little recordings you sent us, you lied! There is no damage to the pump! There was no malfunction. But what we have noticed theft, vandalizing our property. What did I tell you on the first day? Don’t do anything with the scrap! Don’t hide any of it!”

Jerking Rey out of her cot, the Captain grabbed the doll. “Is this what you did? Made a child’s play thing out of what you should’ve been repairing? Haha, we should just dump you off at the nearest civilized planet.”

The Captain snapped his fingers, signaling his lackey to come over. “Hey, do you have a lighter on you?”

Another person, cloaked in darkness, fumbled around their pockets. “Yeah, I think I do.” His voice was muffled and buried.

Forcing Rey up, he had two other lackeys—these both visible—restrain her. He then took the lighter in one hand the doll in the other. The man standing in the darkness continued to watch from afar. 

“I can’t shoot you out of the airlock, my Master said I couldn’t anymore, but I can do this,” The main said. Lighting a fire, he burned the doll. Slowly the metal began to melt and break, eventually turning into a molten mess on the floor. The doll was gone. 

“And as for this,” The Captain said, grabbing the metal she used to keep track of the time. “Hmm, you’ve been tracking how long you’ve been here? Well, you don’t need this anymore either.” 

He took out a saw from his back pocket and sliced it in two, placing it on top of the puddle of the doll. 

“You’ll never get off this ship now,” He snarled. “You’ll be trapped forever!”

Rey felt an anger bubble up. A fire ignited in her gut, she had to do something. She did all this work for these people who ignored her, for people who treated her like she didn’t matter. And they came into her cage and harassed her. They ruined the only things she valued. And now they were going to lock her in a box forever. She’d never reach Ahch-To. She’d never reach her parents.

The lust of revenge and retribution pulsed through her with each beat of her heart.

“No, no, no,” Rey said. She didn’t want to get angry—not like before, not like with the man on Jakku. Not like with Plutt. She didn’t want to get violent again. She felt horrible, awful, shameful after acting in rage. But she had to do something. Instinct kept calling at her, pulling her muscles and taking over her brain. She lost control of herself. 

She took her staff. She broke out of the control of the two men, shoving them to the ground. Her vision fogged up, her senses numbed. Rey had no idea what was happening to her or what she was doing—it was as if something took control over her. 

With no hesitation, Rey charged ahead towards the Captain. Staff in hand, she started whaling on him. Rey’s modifications to her staff caused electrical waves to flow through him, causing convulsions. His screams of agony fell on closed ears. With each strike on him, the anger grew within Rey. It gave her power. She felt strong. A part of her enjoyed it—relishing each strike.

“Good, good,” The hidden man said. His voice cut through Rey’s anger, penetrating her hatred and reaching her brain. It began to split into a thousand. In an instant, he became one with the darkness and disappeared. 

The other two men lay unconscious, the Captain had been beaten within an inch of his life. Still, Rey kept going. She was an animal—her humanity suppressed and gone. 

The fire, started by the Captain to burn her doll—the act which started all this mess—set off the alarms. The high-pitched, continuous buzz distracted Rey. Smoke clogged her throat, her eyes started to water. 

“Where am I?” She confusedly said, regain control over her senses. Right as the smoke made the room nearly impossible to see, Rey got a glimpse of the man’s face. It was bloodied and beaten, swollen and scarred. He couldn’t breathe. She also got a glimpse of the escape pod—the door now open thanks to the alarm going off. She could be free. 

“No, no, no,” Rey panickedly said. “I couldn’t have done this? No, this cannot be. No, how could I…” She saw the blood on her hands, knowing she did what she feared. But she also knew she could escape and get off to Ahch-To, to where she needed to be. To where her parents were. 

But would they accept her after what she’s done? Would they accept if their child was capable of such violence?

Rey started to choke on the smoke. “I couldn’t have done this...I must…” Rey grew faint. She slumped onto the ground, her staff rolling out of her hand.

“No,” She pushed herself up with her staff and grabbed the Captain. Dragging him to the door, Rey propped him against the eye scanner to open the main door. The smoke immediately dissipated into the rest of the ship. The other two men came to, awakening and walking towards Rey. They were just as confused as she was.

“Take him to the infirmary, I,” She paused. “The fire, something. I don’t know. But he’s hurt and near death.” 

The men obliged, picking up the Captain. As she hobbled back into the room, the men showed no concern for Rey’s well-being. 

With the alarms still buzzing, the escape pod door was open. She didn’t know how to get to Ahch-To, but she knew after what she did she’d never be accepted on the ship. She didn’t even want to be. Space wasn’t meant for her. 

Rey entered the escape pod, hurrying in with her staff and bag, and closed the door. The pod fired off into the dark abyss of space. Slowly the light of the ship faded into darkness.

Rey was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much like before, I think this was a weaker chapter—I think these two are the weakest in the story—but they are important for informing the rest of it. Think of the confrontation with the Captain and what that might mean!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey drifts through the cold vacuum of space before arriving at her destination. She finds a strange old man who warns her to leave the planet.

Rey drifted through the darkness without any direction. She had limited air and even less water. She moved minimally in order to conserve power.She had no plan for how she was going to get to Ahch-To or anywhere else. Perhaps a cruiser or some other vessel that goes this deep into the stars would find her. Perhaps she’d crash onto a civilized moon or asteroid of some kind. 

Or maybe she’d live the rest of her life abandoned in space before succumbing away.

She deserved it.

She felt a perpetual guilt for what she did to that man. No matter how mean the Captain was to her, he did not deserve to suffer. Much like the Man on Jakku, and Plutt, and now the Captain, Rey felt sick to her stomach every time she acted out of anger; when she acted out of violence. 

“I just, I can’t do that anymore,” She said. “What is the point? What good did violence get me?” 

She looked out of the window, her only gateway to the outside world. She saw nothing but darkness before her. 

“Why did you show mercy?” A voice echoed in Rey’s head. Faintly, she could identify the Man in Black—but it was surrounded by others. She stared into the cold distance of space. She saw the Man take shape among the stars. 

Rey down at her hands. She saw the dried stains of blood. “What do you mean, mercy?”

“You had him in your hands. You had his life in your hands,” The voice said. “You could have put an end to him. You could have had revenge for all he did to you!” The voice grew angier, the escape pod started to shake, rivets and bolts flew out. 

“Well maybe I didn’t want to kill him! Maybe that wouldn’t have solved anything! Maybe my parents wouldn’t have accepted me if I was so evil!” 

“What do you know about parents, scavenger,” He said. “You don’t know what that feels like.”

“What do I know about not being accepted!?” Rey said, raising her fist in anger. Seeing the blood on her hand reminded her of what she had done. She lowered her fist and tried to control herself. The pod stopped shaking.

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” The voice said. “You never knew your parents.” 

Rey felt mocked and belittled.

“Well, no matter,” He said. “I can fix that.” 

An asteroid came hurtling out of darkness and crashed into the escape pod, sending it flying in a direction. 

“Woaaaah!” Rey screamed, flying out of her seat. She bounced all around the escape pod—which lacked any gravity. The pod flew around space, rotating freely. 

The pod kept going before eventually being pulled in by a planet’s gravity. The outer hull began to burn up as it gained speed at a dangerous pace. Rey could do nothing but sit helplessly and watch certain death. 

The pod grew closer to the surface, penetrating the clouds and pounding through the rain. Breaking through the clouds, Rey looked through the window—seeing nothing but an endless sea before her. The pod crashed into the ocean, landing deep in the sea. The escape pod collapsed under the pressure of the ocean. Water flooded all around Rey, carrying her away.

“Oh no,” Rey thought. She had never experienced water before—not in this quantity. Instead of dying in a fire, she’d be drowning on the ocean floor. She’d become part of the sea. 

Rey accepted the inevitability of death as she sank in the ocean. 

She’d never get back to Jakku. She’d never see her parents. She’d never find her place in the world. She’d be alone forever—die at the bottom of the sea, with no one caring and no one knowing. 

She’d be forgotten and unloved.

As Rey felt the last bits of life leave her, she found a new force awakening within her. She didn’t know what it was: death, the afterlife, or perhaps just a stray wave. But something caused her to regain strength. Whether by instinct or by a miracle, Rey swam. She didn’t know how, but she swam up the sea—without a need to breathe—and pushed herself out of the ocean. The currents of the sea, kicked up by the thunderclouds and wins, were working against her but that didn’t matter. She kept kicking and swimming and pushing and going. Nothing would stop her.

Breaking the surface, she saw the sun crack out over the clouds. The lightning relented, the storm had subsidized—but the clouds in the sky made it apparent they’d be back. Despite this, Rey floated on the surface and enjoyed the view. She came upon an island, with a large mountain and specks of green painting it. 

As she grew closer, she swore she saw two people standing on the coastline. It was just as before, just as in the dream she always had: the man with the long hair and the woman who looked just like Rey. 

“My parents?” She asked, unsure if whether the vision was real or a mirage. Hurring, she swam to the shore. But as she did so, she lost control of herself. She forgot what she learned. She could no longer swim and she began to struggle to even tread water against the ferocious tides. Losing herself, she fell into the ocean. She was at the complete mercy of the waves. 

But the currents shifted and a wind blew in, pulling her on the shore. She washed up on the beach—with a mouthful of sand and seaweed.

“Pewpah,” She spat to get the sand and greenery out of her mouth. “Ew, what is this stuff?” The sand felt weird to her. Rey was used to the dry sands of Jakku—the sand the wind could pick up and blow, the sand which would clog up and get everywhere. But this sand was different. It clumped and felt moist. It stuck together. Rey figured it could almost be used to build things.

Pushing herself up, Rey tried to get as much of the sand-mud off of her as she good. Her clothes—so light and pristine—had been sullied by the fire, water, and mud. She looked like a mess. Her hair, wet and heavy, fell out of its buns. She looked at a reflection of herself in the water.

“What happened to me?” She said. The face she saw looked nothing like the face she once knew. She looked down at her hands and saw the water, though salty and coarse, washed the blood off her hands.

She saw her bag floating up out of the water. Rey grabbed it and left it out to dry a bit before putting it back on her back. 

A noise startled Rey. “Hurrank, hurrank!” Suddenly, she felt something nibbling at her legs. 

“Huh?” She said, turning around. They were these little creatures—barely reaching her calf. They were round and appeared to have beaks. They looked like birds of some kind. 

Rey knelt down to the ground to look at one. “What do you want, little guy?” 

“Hronk hronk,” It replied. A few had gone over to Rey’s staff and started fooling around with it. It washed out of sea shortly after Rey. 

“Wait, no! Don’t touch that!” Rey didn’t want any of them to get zapped. She pulled the staff up, shaking it so the birds would fall off. One of them, a persistent little guy, stuck to the staff. 

“Come on,” She said. “Let go!” She pulled and poked the bird, but he wouldn’t relent. The bird kept chomping away at the staff, getting closer to the shock sensors. With enough force, Rey pulled it off. But the knockback caused her to fall back into the mud.

“Ugh,” She sighed. “Look at this, look at what you made me do!” She raised her voice. The birds looked startled. Some started to fly away. More started to swim away. But one remained. The one who wouldn’t let go of the staff.

“Well it appears I didn’t frighten you,” She said. “Sorry for pulling you. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself! This staff has done enough of that today.”

The bird had a confused look on its face. 

“Oh who am I kidding, it’s not like you can understand me. It’s not like anyone is here!” 

Rey stood up to take stock of her situation. She didn’t see any sign of people. But she saw a beautiful landscape. She saw mountains tall enough to reach into the heavens. She saw rock formations so elegant, so unlike anything she saw on Jakku. The sands of Jakku were at the mercy of the wind, but the rocks here were sculpted by time alone.

And she saw trees. And grass. And bushes. And plants. All sorts of greenery she only read about. The kind she saw only through holos on Jakku. She saw pictures, but never a real plant. Nothing so lively. It put her flower to shame. She never imagined she’d see something so beautiful.

Her mouth fell, her eyes widened. Her heart started to race. She whispered to herself, “I didn't know there was this much green in the whole galaxy.” 

Something called her. She needed to reach that mountain, she needed to get to the top of it. Maybe on the other valley there was a settlement, maybe that’s where her parents lived.

So Rey started walking.

With staff in hand, she started marching off the shore and up the mountain side. A seemingly endless forest of mountains greeted Rey, but there was clearly a tallest one. She knew she had to reach it. Somehow.

Continuing on, she reached a rock formation. She would need to climb up, but this would prove to be no problem. She climbed a lot on Jakku: in starships, on abandoned walkers, on top of caves. 

“Let’s see here,” She reached for rope on her belt. “There!” Throwing it up, she hooked it on one of the rocks. 

Climbing up the cliff’s face, she heard a familiar noise.

“Hoooooarank!” A bird screamed. Rey could tell from the sound it was the persistent one from before, the one who wouldn’t let go of her staff. She had company. 

“Oh no,” She said. “You shouldn’t be here! You need to go back to the beach!” 

“Hwank, hwarnk,” The bird replied, griping further onto Rey’s back. Much like before, he wouldn’t let go. 

“Well, whatever, I guess,” Rey said. “But if you fall off you can’t blame me!”

Continuing her climb, Rey reached more and more mountains. She climbed and scaled them with relative ease—similar to the first. Occasionally she rested at the peaks and plateaus, to catch her breath and take in the scenery. Besides the birds, she didn’t see a ton of animals on the planet. But there was a ton of plant life. She couldn’t get over how green, how rich this planet was. She tried to take mental notes of all the plants so she’d have these memories forever. She thought of how much her little, wilting plant would flourish here. It wasn’t built for the harsh environment of Jakku, it was built for Ahch-To. 

A planet full of water, full of life. 

As she approached the tallest mountain, she saw something in the distance. A few buildings—nothing much. They didn’t look fancy at all, built out of rustic stone and looked to be as old as the planet. But she saw a light in one of the buildings.

Someone was there.

A person.

Her parents?

She needed to find out. 

So Rey started trekking down the rocks down into the valley beneath the tallest mountain into the village below. The bird followed Rey’s every movement. She named the bird Porgy—for it just seemed right looking into its eyes. 

She started peeking in the buildings for signs of people, but they all looked empty. One after another, each building looked as if it had been abandoned for quite a long time. They were all smaller than her cage aboard the ship, smaller than her Walked on Jakku. She counted fourteen buildings, though they were closer in size to huts. She reached the hut with the lights eminiating—it was the oldest looking hut.

It had a door whereas the other huts had nothing. The door looked to be metal, Rey recognized it as the paneling from an X-Wing. She was familiar with it, she scrapped these a lot on Jakku. So there was someone here, someone who came recently. Someone who knew ships and their parts. 

Just like Rey.

“Could it be?” Rey thought to herself. 

Hypotheticals began to race in her head. What if her parents were living here as exiles, hiding on the run from someone who threatened them and they had to leave Rey on Jakku for her safety? What if they were people who were victims, who had a child stolen from them and spent their whole life in grief? What if they were war heroes but they had to give their child up to continue to help the galaxy—like noble heroes? Whoever they were, Rey knew they would be perfect. And they would be elated to see her. 

Rey knocked on the metal door, hoping someone would answer. Her heart fluttered, her quest would be complete. She’d meet her parents, they’d take her in. Everything would be ok. They’d be reunited, together at long last. It took 19 years, but better late than never.

“Hello,” Rey said. “Is anyone there?”

“Go away!” A voice barked. It sounded male. 

“Hello? Who is this?” Rey asked, hoping for an answer. “I’m looking for someone, I’m from Jakku.”

“Why would I care?” The voice said. “No one’s here but me. Just leave!”

Rey was shocked. If this was her father, he didn’t know who she was. Or didn’t know what Jakku was. Or didn’t know that’s where she ended up.

“Please, I need your help,” Rey said. “I’m looking for someone very important here on Ahch-To.” 

The man opened his door, his eyes immediately catching Rey’s. The man looked sad, as if he hasn’t slept in years. His hair was long and gray. His face wrinkled and old. His eyes looked as if they’ve seen a ghost—or something worse. Rey knew that look from Jakku, from when she’d see bounty hunters. 

This man was a killer.. 

To him, though, Rey was the monster. Something about her face, the way she looked, terrified him. It reminded him of what he had done. A feeling of terror and guilt came over him. He slammed the door in her face.

“Go away!” He commanded. “I never want to see you again! Leave this island at once!” 

“W-wait,” She said, confused. The man was the first human she had seen in quite some time. “I’m looking for something here. I heard a rumor about Ahch-To.” 

Screaming from his room, he said one final thing. “Don’t learn the truth!”

Going in one of the other huts, Rey sat on a bench with Porgy at her side. She had grown fond of the bird in a way. 

“Porgy,” She said. “I need you to stay here. I need you to watch that man, I don’t know what it is…” She thought back on her brief look at the man’s face. He looked familiar, in an odd sort of way. Maybe he had been on Jakku before. There was a weird sort of look in his eyes; shame seemed to dominate his soul. When Rey looked at him, she had a similar feeling to that when she saw her bloodstained hands for the first time aboard the ship. She needed to learn what the “truth” meant. Was it related to her parents?

“Can you do that for me?” 

“Hooorank!” The bird answered. Rey couldn’t quite understand him, but she gathered enough that he would. 

“Thank you,” She replied. “I will return for you.”

The next morning, Rey would set off for the top of the mountain. Just because her parents weren’t here doesn’t mean they aren’t anywhere on Ahch-To. But for now, she needed rest.

_ The stars hung above the Ahch-To night sky—the storm clouds had departed. It was just as dark as it was on that night.  _

_ A coincidence?  _

_ No, he knew there were no coincidences in the Force.  _

_ There was something about this girl. Something about her face—the way she looked at him, the anger in her heart. He had something to do with bringing her here. He would get his revenge.  _

_ No, that couldn’t make sense. He saw to it that he couldn’t terrorize, that he couldn’t bring harm to anyone. Permanently. Luke broke his own soul to ensure it. There’s no way he could be back. No way he could be involved.  _

_ But the planet had changed. The storms became more frequent, there were areas of the planet covered in fog—unreachable by Luke. And that castle he couldn’t touch. Something, some dark and twisted forces had to be at work here. And this girl, this innocent girl, was a pawn for his evil machinations. Luke needed to end it. _

_ But he couldn’t. He barely could do it once. He couldn’t do it again.  _

_ But he had to.  _

_ But he couldn’t. _

_ He shouldn’t. _

_ He wouldn’t. _

_ And yet, Luke found himself once more hanging above someone as they slept. He had a saber in his hand, a saber he hadn’t touched in years. He looked into the girl, just as he did to Luke. He expected to find darkness, to find anger. To find rage and resentment. To find all sorts of things which terrified him, which reminded him of that which he swore to destroy. _

_ But he didn’t find those things. _

_ He found the end. _

_ He found the beginning. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry for the delay, I figured no one would read it yesterday what with all the news.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey arrives at the mysterious castle off the shoreline. Expecting to find a crowd of people, she soon learns she's all alone.

Rey saw it would be a long climb down the other side of the mountain. But she wasn’t afraid, for she gained skills climbing, using her knowledge from scavenging. It would be a long, but easy, hike. But still so much felt new to her. The rocks, the slopes, the trees, the moisture settling in the air—all of these things were unfamiliar to her. 

Reaching the shoreline, Rey saw a large castle on the other side of the water.

“This must be it,” She said. “It’s the only place left on the island I haven’t looked.”

Rey looked around the peach for something she could use to float to the island—a rock, a log, something of the sort. But she couldn’t find anything of the sort.

“Well,” She said, anxiously looking to the ocean. “I guess I have no choice but to go in.”

Walking towards the ocean, Rey put her hand in the water to gauge how deep the waters were. As soon as she did it, the Man’s voice called out once more in her head.

“Close…so close,” He said. “Then I’ll get…”

Rey jerked her hand out of the water.

“What did he did mean by get?” She asked herself. “What’s going on here?” 

Strapping her staff to her back and tying her loose clothes tightly to her body, Rey dove into the water. The moment she broke the water it was as if she knew exactly what to do—just before, just like in the pod. She tried to close her eyes and replicate that moment of breaking out of the pod. She let go. The moment she felt the embrace of the water around her, the moment she lost herself, instinct took over and she swam to the castle.

The seawater wasn’t like the rain. While the rain was soft, welcome, and inviting, this water was harsh and aggressive. The wind whipped up a current, pushing her away from the castle. She had to use all her strength to go against the tide, to not let the forces of nature deter her from her destination. Unlike before, she was conscious during her excursion in the water. The salt of the water hurt her; it was like the sand of the desert only even more difficult to avoid. The taste of the water repulsed her. 

Rey arrived on the island with the castle. Shaking herself dry, she started to think of a plan to scale the castle and find a way in. The castle was built on a large plateau on the island. Unlike the main island, this one had no slopes. There were no forests or other plants throughout this island, it was dead and barren. Large, flat rocks were all in sight—not even a blade of grass.

Feeling the side of the main rock, where the castle stood, Rey felt a strange sensation take over her.

“Something’s not right,” She said. “This place, it’s not as I saw it. Something horrible...” Her fear was not for herself, but for her parents. She feared they were in grave danger in the castle. She needed to save them, even if she didn’t know them. She knew they were in the castle. She knew they needed her help.

Looking up at the castle again, she figured out how to get in. Much like the sunken starships she explored back home for her survival, she could climb the castle. She saw windows near the top of the castle.

“Where is it,” She said, fumbling around her belt. “I know I have it here somewhere...” Grabbing her rope gun, Rey tried to line the sights up with one of the grooves of the large blocks making up the castle’s exterior. She had three shots left on her gun.

The first one was way off. The fog and the rain made aiming impossible. For the second one, she got a tad closer. But even then, the rope didn’t stick in the groove. The walls were too wet, the hook on the end of the rope couldn’t get a grip.

“Ugh!” She yelled. The anger welled up in her. A storm cloud settled over the castle; a lightning bolt struck the spire. “How am I supposed to do this?”

The accompanying clap of thunder gave Rey a moment of clarity. She didn’t need to aim. She didn’t need the sights. She just need to shoot it up to the window—that would break it and the robe would hook inside.

With her final shot, Rey did just that. Without a moment’s thought, she shot her gun up. The hook, somehow, landed perfectly and broke through the glass. The shards of the window all fell inside due to how she shot the gun. Her rope hooked inside and she began scaling the side of the castle; just like on the mountains. She would finally see her parents. She would finally be reunited with them. She would finally belong. 

But what she saw surprised her greatly.

“What is this place?” Rey said to herself. The castle looked nothing like Rey had seen before in life. There was seemingly no electronics, no technology inside. The hallway Rey entered was little by a line of candles—lined up with the same spacing between each other. The walls inside matched the walls on the outside; they were made up of stone blocks. Touching them, the cold dampness felt strange to Rey. She started walking down the hallway before turning around to look out the window she shattered.

“Wow,” Rey said in awe. “I can’t believe I climbed all this.” It seemed as if the castle grew in height once Rey stepped inside. Jumping out would prove to be fatal. She’d need to find a different way out of the castle when she left.

Backing up from the castle, she saw the window she shattered was accompanied by one on each side. The stained glass windows had beautiful designs on them. On the left, the window was a woman. She wore a white dress and had a blaster in hand. Her hair was tied up in matching buns on either side of her head. On the right, there was a man. The man had shaggy—but not long—hair. He had a black vest over a white shirt, with a blaster of his own in hand. The two people had a look of confidence and strength within them, but also a level of fear and uncertainty. Rey didn’t know these faces but they felt familiar to her. 

“Could these be my parents?” She said, walking towards the window on the left. They didn’t look like the figures in her dream, but perhaps her memories were cloudy—for she had no clear memories of her parents. 

She touched the stained glass with the woman. As she did that, the bad feelings that pervaded Rey as soon as she set foot on castle island went away. They were replaced by feelings of comfort and warmth. Looking at the face, she couldn’t help but notice the similarities to her own. 

She crouched down to look at the window she shattered in the middle. The pieces were broken up so finely and in so many pieces, she couldn’t tell what was the design. Some of the pieces were black, others white. Trying to put them together was a fool’s errand. They were so small she could barely pick them up. 

But one piece was larger than the rest. It appeared to be near the middle of the design—perhaps it was the piece she shot. Around the edges, it was pure black. But in the center, there was a dot of white. Rey picked up this piece and put it into her bag. She figured, if nothing else, it’d make a good decoration for her home on Jakku.

As she walked down the hallway, getting closer to the candles, Rey saw statues standing in the gaps of the candles. On one side of the hallway, the stone figures had simple robes and swords in front of them in a defensive stance. On the other side, there were figures in various robes and armor with swords in offensive stances. There were twelve statues in all—with six on each side. Rey wasn’t one for fear, but something about this scared her. The way the statues on opposing sides stared at each other unnerved her. Their lifeless, stone eyes were locked in eternal conflict

Moving her way down the hall, she turned around to get a view of the situation. Six versus six. Twelve in all. One defending, one attacking—but nothing happening. 

Rey lost herself in the statues. They were old; far older than anything on Jakku. Rey had no idea what they were about or who they were. But there was a power to them. She wanted to know their story. Maybe one of the statued figures was a parent. She kept watching the statues; watching their eyes.

She felt as if the eyes were watching her too.

Then, she saw an eye move.

She didn’t believe her it—perhaps she needed some rest—but Rey knew what she saw. 

“That couldn’t have happened,” Rey said. She walked towards the statue. It was one on the side of offense—representing a creature with horns coming out of their head and a blade as long as her staff. As she approached that statue, its mouth opened up. 

“Go…..back…..” It softly whispered.

“Ahhhh!!!!” Rey screamed, bolting to the back of the room. She ran straight into a statue, bonking her head on its base. She fell to her knees, at the base of another statue at the back of the corridor. It was the last statue; the thirteenth. 

“This one,” Rey said, looking at its head. “It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t fit anywhere” On one side, the head had a helmet. It looks unnatural. A respirator or some kind of breathing apparatus rested on that side mouth. On the other side, the face was of a handsome man. He had long hair—like the one Rey saw in her dream—and a beautiful face. A scar went down his cheek. One fist was closed with a sword in it, the other was open. 

The open palm invited Rey. It called towards her. The statued hypnotized her.She never had a greater urge in life but to touch this plam. 

Rey reached out to touch the open palm. A shock bolted at her as she did that, causing her hand to jerk backwards. 

“Ow!” Rey screamed. She looked down at her hand and saw a burn mark in the middle. It stung like nothing else she had felt before. Rey had been burned and zapped before—working in abandoned technology will do that, as some of it still has live current—but nothing like this. 

“Is there a washroom around here?” Rey thought. In a castle of such size, despite its primitive nature, surely there was water to be found inside.

Turning back down the statue hallway, she found a variety of other rooms and corridors. The castle felt like a big maze. She had no idea where she was going or what she was looking for. But each step she took hurt, the burn on her hand sizzled and caused more pain.. 

Her walk turned into a run, the pain became unbearable. Each room she entered was not what she sought. She found lots of libraries, bedrooms, sitting chambers. She found rooms with ornate instruments. She found dining halls and kitchens. She found observatories and offices. But she couldn’t find what she was looking for. 

Losing hope, Rey discovered another room. All the running tired her out, so she figured she’d rest for a while. Unlike the other rooms, this one had a door—a big slab of wood. The doors on Jakku were either beads, easy to just walk through, or computerized doors that automatically opened. But this slab of wood had no way of opening it. There wasn’t a knob. 

“Perhaps,” Rey thought. She reached her hand out to the door. A small bolt of lightning shot out of her hand and opened the door. The wound on her hand had disappeared. 

Entering the room, Rey saw it was completely empty. The floors were stone, the walls were stone. There were no windows—all the light in the room came from thirteen candles on the wall. Six candles were on each side of the room, with one large candle on the far back. In the middle of the room was a large mirror—exactly as tall as Rey. 

Rey walked up to the mirror and saw something—the people from the window.

“Where is my child?” The woman said. “Why has my child not returned?” The woman’s beauty was ever-present in the vision, though her words added a dimension of sadness.

“We should never have sent our love away,” The man said. “This was all my fault.” Rey felt less of a connection to the man, but she could feel the sorrow radiating from him. 

The two figures became one on the mirror and disappeared, leaving Rey with nothing more than her own reflection. 

“Could those be my parents?” Rey asked. “What did they mean by sent away?” If they were her parents, maybe they were talking about sending her away.

The flames on the candles all tripled in size; the room became as bright as the sun. It became as hot as the Jakku desert. The moisture on the stone floors and walls evaporated; the room dried out immediately. Much like on the ship, smoke filled the room. 

Rey looked again at the mirror and saw her reflection change once more; changing this time to the Man in Black. 

“They would’ve disappointed you,” The singular voice said. The ceiling of the room fell in on itself, letting in the rising moon. He extended his arm out of the mirror and reached out, attempting to grab Rey. She grabbed her staff and smashed the mirror into a thousand pieces. In an instant, the smoke cleared out of the room and the fires dulled. Rey went on the ground again to try and see if the pieces of the mirror were still there, but they had all disappeared. They were gone in a cloud of smoke. 

“Something isn’t right here,” Rey said, trying to catch her breath. “Not at all.” 

Rey grew tired from all her traveling. There was an abundance of bedrooms, though, so she figured she’d pick one to sleep in overnight. Hopefully this excursion wouldn’t take more than a day or two more. But no longer than that, hopefully, for she did not feel comfortable in the castle. 

She entered the bedroom closest to her and actually looked inside. Before she glanced, just to see whether it had water or not. But now she actually spent time taking it all in.

The room stunned her.

This one room was at least three times the size of her home back on Jakku. There were dressers and vanities and all kinds of other furniture. But it was all old, everything looked lost in time. None of it looked technological, none of it looked modern. The floor, too, was made out of wood—unlike the stone floor of the rest of hte castle.The room had a closet. Opening the door on the left revealed a collection of gowns and other elaborate clothing fit for a queen. It disgusted Rey, she’d never wear anything as impractical as that. 

And the Bed.

It was massive—it could fit two adults on it, at least. It was fancy and ornate; the frame would be worth a thousand portions. It had elaborate sheets surrounding the bed to block out the light. 

Rey threw her bag beside the bed and rested her staff beside her on the bed. She didn’t want to lie on the bed in case it belonged to someone else, but so far in the castle she found no sign of anyone actually living there. 

Rey didn’t know how to lie on the bed. On her cot, it squeezed her into one position. Eventually, she would go to sleep. It wasn’t restful, but it got the job done. But on this bed, the comfort overcame her. The soft sheets and mattress caressed her body, bending to every curvature of her. It was paradise. Rey felt as if she was lying on a cloud. For the first time in her life, Rey easily drifted to sleep. 

But still, it didn’t feel right. The size of the bed felt massive. Rey felt out of place on the bed, like she was missing something. Every hour she’d wake up, expecting to find something. But she never did. 

For a week, this process would go on. Rey spent her days exploring the castle, trying to gain a sense of familiarity with the maze. In one of the dressers in her bedroom—which she claimed as her headquarters—she sprawled out all her things. She didn’t have much and what she did have was mostly practical: a few tools from Jakku, a canteen, a couple of hastily-prepared star charts she made during her stay aboard the freighter. Nothing remarkable. 

Much like on Jakku and aboard the ship, Rey kept track of the days by carving into the side of the dresser. As she woke up each morning, she tied her hair back into three buns. She traveled to the castle with her down, but now that she could see herself again she could make herself comfortable again. 

She began to master the layout of the castle, or at least what she could find. Each day she uncovered more areas of the castle. She unlocked more in the labyrinth of corridors and hallways and passages. But two things eluded her: an exit and her parents. 

On the seventh day while exploring the first floor, she found something new—a door she could not open. Much like the one on the level she broke into, the one with the mirror, this door had no knob or other means of entry. 

But more concerning for Rey was what she felt. As she touched the surface of the door—even as she was just in the general vicinity of the door—Rey felt unmatched fear and guilt radiating from the area. She couldn’t explain it, but these emotions were strong throughout the whole castle. Rey wasn’t one to believe in supernatural nonsense, but this whole castle felt off. 

Rey believed in one thing though—truth. Much like on Jakku, the only way to know what was truly inside a ship was to go into the ship. So, somehow, she had to open this door. She sat and pondered for a while, thinking of how to get the door down. She had no tools to cut it down or make a hole in the door.

“I know!” She exclaimed, running up the stairs to the level she first entered. “The statue, the thirteenth. When I touched it before, it gave me a funny mark that opened the door. Maybe it’s some kind of primitive locking mechanism? This castle is old.” 

She arrived at the statue and placed her palm on the open palm of the statue just as before. She hoped to find the same results and unlock the secrets of that room.

It didn’t work.

So she tried it again.

And again.

And again.

It still didn’t work.

“Hmm…” She said, thinking about what could be going wrong. “Perhaps I need to do what happened before?” 

So she got down on her knees and replicated exactly the circumstances from the last time. 

It didn’t work.

“What am I doing wrong!” She yelled, with anger rising in her voice. “This doesn’t make any sense!” She thought deeper about it. Was it the urge? She didn’t know why she felt it then but not now. The thirteenth statue frightened her before but not at all now.

“Ugh,” Night began to fall on the castle, so Rey decided this could wait until morning. She was too tired to keep working. “I’m just wasting time, I’ll never find out how to open this door. I’ll just be stuck in this castle forever!” Rey stormed back to her bedroom—each step in her hefty boots shaking the ground beneath her. 

When she entered her room, Rey looked down at herself. In her whole journey through the castle, she hadn’t changed her clothes. Her clothes began to show how long they’ve gone without washing—they had been exposed to copious amounts of water and smoke and the grind of daily use. On Jakku, people really couldn’t wash their clothes too often—water was a commodity, with more practical uses than the vanity of clean clothes. She grew accustomed to hanging her clothes out each day outside the next morning. The high winds and heat of the day would dry them out and make them good enough. Unfortunate for Rey, Ahch-To had too much moisture and too little wind for this to be a solution. 

“I can’t sleep like this,” Rey said. “I mean, it’s not like it matters. But I’m just getting that beautiful bed filthy.” She remembered the gowns in the closet—but she’d never be caught dead wearing something like that. Even sleeping by herself, she wouldn’t wear something that over-the-top. 

Rey tore open every drawer she could find, but none of them had clothes. They had some spare sheets, some fabrics—but no clothes.

Ever the resourceful one, who could make something out of nothing, Rey looked at these scraps and saw potential.

“Let’s see here,” Rey said, rummaging through her tools on the top of the dresser. “I’ll need the needle, I’ll need the heat gun...that should do it. Wait, a knife would help too.” 

Cutting up pieces of scrap, Rey made some makeshift string. Using the needle and heat gun, she threaded together and repurposed the sheets into a crude robe. The color wasn’t Rey—the sheets were a brownish grey, she was used to lighter colors—but it’d work all the same. She’d just be wearing this to sleep anyway. 

“Alright, now I”ll just,” She said, figuring out how to wear this improvised cowl. It didn’t fit the best—its sleeves were cumbersome and far too large for Rey. “There, good enough.” 

She looked at the bed and then down at her feet. She still wore her boots, which were becoming more oppressive towards Rey. They were helpful in Jakku and still had their purpose in the castle, but they felt useless at night. She thought about removing them and giving her ankles a break from their weight.

But she never did that—not even on Jakku. She was too scared of something happening to her while she slept, she didn’t want to not have her boots on hand. But her legs were sore and it felt purposeless. There wasn’t any danger in the castle, there was no one else with her. She had been exploring it for over a week now; she found no signs of life. She was all alone. Perhaps should get let her guard down a bit.

Debating this in her head, Rey determined her best course of action would be to take the boots off but leave them by her bedside. She’d put the staff in one of the boots, so she could flip up the staff and get one of the boots in her hand while sliding the other on her foot. She got in bed and slept the night away. 

Unlike the other nights, Rey didn’t wake up once. She focused on the door: how to get in, what may be behind it, why she felt so uneasy around it. But as she thought of the door, her mind shifted towards her failure to open it. This shift lead to anger growing in her as she slept. As the anger settled within her, she tossed around in the bed. For the first time on the castle, Rey had a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Things really pick up in the following chapter—the slower bits are all done.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sleeping Rey has a horrid dream of destruction and death which quickly turns into reality.

_ Rey’s eyes opened. She was in a field—unlike anything she had seen before. It wasn’t wet and rocky like Ahch-To, nor dry and sandy like Jakku. Grass painted the landscape; trees stood erect out of the ground. Fruit and life were in abundance. She recognized nothing here. Was this a different planet? Was this paradise? Rey didn’t know, but she liked it. _

_ The sun wasn’t harsh like on Jakku nor timid on Ahch-To. It was friendly, warm, and inviting—it welcomed her, like a mother to a child. She walked in the sun, basking in its warmth and glory. Her walk quickly turned into a hop and frolic. She was so unlike herself in this dream. She had no anger, no resentment towards her past.  _

_ She came upon a pond—the water a picture-perfect clear blue. She could see a perfect reflection of herself in the water. Her hair was down, perfectly flowing down her head to her shoulders. Her face bore none of the scars of growing up in the desert. She looked down at her reflection—she was just as she was born. Unblemished, unmarked, perfectly unsullied. Nothing hid her. She was as bare as the rest of the animals here in the field. And yet, she felt no shame. There was no desire for modesty, no guilt or embarrassment. She felt free.  _

_ The joy propelled her up into the clouds. She saw all the trees and birds and fish and animals all together. There was no fighting, no violence. No one had to work for anything, there was no struggle. As she moved through the field, she felt a sense of unity. She was in harmony with nature.  _

_ Then, over the horizon, she saw another human. She didn’t know who it was—the person was far in the distance. Rey could tell from the rough shape it was a man; a big one at that. She broke through the horizon and over the landscape to get closer to him. She saw the finer details of him—he, too, was bare to wilderness. But she couldn’t see a face; fog obstructed his face.  _

_ Rey landed on the ground, falling to her knees just at the bottom of the hill. She crawled up the hill, breaking through the fog to see the man. But the fog still clouded over his face. Rey stood up to look at the man, to speak to him—but she couldn’t; her lips were sealed. So she reached out to touch the man’s hand. His hand extended alongside hers.  _

_ Right as their fingers were about to touch, a large snake—with a blood-red body and black stripes—burst out of the ground. It sent Rey down the hill rolling. Her hair, so beautiful and angelic, had mussed up all her face. She immediately felt shame at her state of undress. The trees began to die, the animals ran off into the distance. The sun retreated behind clouds. Rey panicked and started to run up the hill, before realizing she needed something to wear. She plucked some leaves from a tree—they had already begun to decay and lose their color—and sprinted up the hill. But the leaves fell and revealed her shame.  _

_ The snake—at least ten meters long and wider than any other snake—moved towards the man. Rey tried to warn him, but she couldn’t speak. The snake began to coil around him, constricting him until he turned blue. Squeezing tighter, the snake moved its head to the top of the man’s head. Opening its jaws as wide as it could, the snake swallowed the man. She hadn’t even met this man, yet she felt sympathy for his suffering. She could do nothing to prevent this from occurring. The grotesque sight upset her deeply.  _

_ Its eyes turned towards Rey. They were a deep shade of soulless black, with a lust for blood. The snake bolted at Rey. She ran back down the hill and through the field as the snake continued in pursuit. If Rey let up for even one second, she’d fall to the same fate as the man.  _

_ She continued on, hoping the snake would give up to pursue some other prey. But Rey was all alone in the field—which at this point was more of a wasteland. The death and destruction continued without limit.  _

_ She found herself back at the pond—the water a dirty brown, polluted and toxic. She could barely see a reflection, but what she could make out disgusted her. She was a monster—her eyes as soulless as the snake. Her body aged rapidly, becoming decrepit and wrinkled. She hated what she saw. Turning around, she saw the snake coming towards her. She let go—not wanting to live anymore. Whatever happened would happen.  _

_ Instead of constricting her, the snake pushed her into the toxic sludge water.  _

“Ahhh!” Rey screamed, waking up. “Where is this? Where am I?” She looked around, not remembering anything about the castle. The intensity of the dream took a few moments to fade away. She felt worried and panicked. She sweat through her new robe—but the oversized sleeves helped to ventilate and keep her cool.

“Huhuhuh,” She tried to catch her breath. “What happened? That must’ve been a bad dream…” Rey sat up in bed, bringing her legs to her torso and leaned against the wall, to ponder the dream. She usually had positive and hopeful dreams about her parents, but ever since the Man in Black showed up her dreams had gone sour. 

“It’s just a dream, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” She said to reassure herself. After a few moments to calm herself, Rey decided to go back to bed. She opened the covers and was moments from drifting off to sleep again.

She felt something move.

Perhaps a bug, perhaps just a little twitch. Nothing too alarming.

She felt something squirm over her leg.

No, no there had to be something.

She felt something again—two somethings, then three. 

Jerking up, she ripped the sheets off the bed.

Snakes! 

Dozens and dozens of snakes were in her bed!

“Oh god!” She screamed, jumping off the bed and grabbing her staff. She started to thwack aimlessly, trying to get the snakes off. But each time she hit a snake, two more came in its place. It was futile to attack. 

“I’ve got to get out of here,” She said as the snake began rolling off the bed and onto the floor. She didn’t have her boots on, so before she could run out of the bedroom she’d need to get her boots. 

“Ok let’s see, I put them by the bed and,” She reached down to get her boots. “Huh, why are these so heavy….” She looked inside the boots to see more snakes in them. 

“Ahhhhhh!” She screamed once more, this time sprinting outside of her room. She didn’t know if she was still dreaming or if this was real. 

Running down the hallway, the snakes chased after her. A wave of snakes flooded the wall, coming after her.She swung her staff to try to stave them off; to give her a bit more space in-between her and the snakes. But just like in the bedroom, these snakes just duplicated upon contact. They weren’t like any snake Rey had seen on Jakku before. 

The chase continued down the labyrinth of passageways until arriving at the hallway with the statues. It was pitch black as all of the candles had gone out. The only source of light were the eyes of the statues, which had begun to have a strange glow to them. As Rey ran past each pair of statues—one on the left, one on the right—the statues began to move. Their arms raised with sword in hand, clashing over her. They formed an archway for Rey to run under. Rey paused under the second one, seeing this deterred the snakes. 

The storm continued to rage outside, claps of thunder provided the score for Rey’s hellish night. She sat on the floor, contemplating her next move. She could continue down through the chamber and find a new room—just write of this section of the castle. Or she could fight the snakes. Or wait until morning and see if they only come out at night. Whatever plan she landed on, Rey figured she was safe under these arches. 

But the snakes were smart.

The snakes began to form—getting closer together, building on top of each other. They formed a ball of sorts. Rey couldn’t believe her eyes. She should be running, but the process fascinated her. It compelled her to keep watching.

The big snake orb shaped further, molding into a large tube. Then, with the brightest strike of lightning and the loudest clap of thunder, the tube transformed into a large snake. It had a blood-red color to its body, with black stripes. It had soulless eyes, with a lust for blood. It was the snake of her dream, only in reality.

Rey didn’t know what to do. She stood cataonic. She couldn’t run; the snake would just chase after her. She couldn’t hide; there was nowhere to hide. She could try to fight, but she would fail. 

The snake stopped before entering the arches. Its eyes stared straight into Rey’s—focusing intently. She felt uncomfortable, she felt as if her deepest secrets and biggest fears were being analyzed. 

In an instant, the snakes eyes began to form pupils. They began to look human. The face began to shift—the snake’s head collapsed, the body began to shrink. The black overtook the red. The reptile began to take a human form. Feet and arms sprouted out. 

It was the Man in Black.

The sight of him broke Rey’s catonicity. “You!” She yelled. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t you see yet!” He replied. “Your parents aren’t here, no one is! I brought you here to serve me. This is my castle!” 

Shock came over her face. She had been fooled. She came all this way, went through all these troubles and trials for nothing. She abandoned her home for nothing. 

“You aren’t ever getting out of here, you are my guest forever,” The Man continued as he paced around—unable to enter under the arches. “You’re going to help me get revenge on the world. You’ll free me from this prison! And then we’ll show everyone what fear really means.”

“No, no, that’s wrong!” She said, grabbing her staff and assuming a defensive position. 

“But I am generous so you’ll gain something too,” He got as close to the arches as he could. “You will have tremendous power!”

She stood her ground, safe under the protective power of the arches. 

“Search in your heart, Rey. Don’t you have someone you would like to get revenge on? Don’t you have something that makes you angry?”

Rey thought about her parents—the resentment as her isolation she had carried with her for all these years. She thought about how poorly she had been treated her whole life. Plutt treated her like a tool, the crew aboard the ship treated her like a slave—her humanity had been denied her entire life. Rey rightfully could have have been angry.

But she wasn’t. Not to the point of turning to darkness. 

“Revenge isn’t the way,” She said. She knew her parents would never want her to turn as evil as this man. “I don’t know what happened to turn you into such a monster, but I’ll never let that happen to me!”

“Very well, Rey,” He said, reaching into his robe. “I hate to do this to you, but you leave me no choice.” He pulled out a piece of metal—a tube not too bigger than kinds she find thrown about on Jakku. With a press of a button, a large red blade shot out of the tube. 

“I’ll let nothing get in my way.” He thrashed about, breaking statues on both sides. They crumbled to pieces easily. 

Suddenly, he could enter the arches.

Rey started backing up, her staff trembling in her hand. 

“My whole time here, I’ve been waiting for just the right person…” He said with anger radiating from his voice. “And I finally found someone strong enough, with enough rage inside of them to match my own. I go through all this trouble to bring them here...and what do I get?” He paused for a moment.

“NOTHING!” He screamed. The force of his unholy voice caused the remaining statues—besides the thirteenth—to shatter. The castle shook. Rey fell to the floor.

“So you won’t willingly come with me? You think your resolve can stop me?” He asked, turning his masked head straight to Rey. He pointed his blade right at Rey’s face—mere centimeters away from her meeting her maker. “Then I’ll make you help me.”

“No, this won’t end like this!” She exclaimed, throwing her staff up to knock the man back. Gaining her footing, Rey remembered all the times she had to fight off cretins on Jakku. She spaced her feet apart, bent her hips, squared her shoulders, and readied her staff to poke. She had cornered herself by the thirteenth statue so she had no other option. 

“You think that puny thing can stop me?” He said. Rey put up her staff in defense as a reflex, but the sword easily cut it in two. The staff that Rey had by her side all her life was no more. 

“No,” She said, looking at the broken pieces of the staff. “My staff...it’s gone.”

“Yes Rey,” He said, nodding his head. “You’re angry because I broke your staff. You want to hurt me in response.” He turned off his sword and dropped it on the ground—nothing stopped Rey from grabbing it. “Do it, hurt me. Strike me down. You deserve it, it’s only right.” 

Rey looked at the blade and contemplated it for a moment. She could end the torment here. If she struck him down, maybe the castle would fall to pieces and she could at least find her way home.

No. 

That’s wrong.

Hurting people is wrong. 

She picked up the sword and stood up. She pointed it at the Man and Black and held her finger over the button. She looked down at the sword and noticed the handiwork—it bore the mark of a poor craftsmen. Whoever built this didn’t know their way around tools. 

“I…..” She said

“Yes, yes,” He started to nod his head. “Do it Rey, strike me down. Destroy me. Free yourself. Spare the galaxy. Avenge your parents”

“I….”

Her resolve lingered with the mention of her parents. Did he kill them? Did he lure them here too? 

It wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t kill him. She couldn’t bear having more blood on her hands. 

“I won’t.” She threw the sword as far as her arm could and stood her ground. 

“Hmmm, very well then.” He pulled the sword back towards him—he didn’t have to move, it just floated back to him. He ignited it. “Then I shall strike you down!” With a flick of his wrist, the sword came down at Rey. 

“Huuuuuuuwah!” He screamed with a thousand voices speaking through him. 

But at the last moment, she rolled away and grabbed onto the only remaining statue. The blade came down on the statue as Rey held onto the open palm.

The eyes of the statue lit up—one blue, one red. Then the halves of the statue lit up—the closed fist half turned red, the open palm turned blue. The wave of energy pulsing through the statue shocked Rey once more, knocking her down to the legs of the statue. She looked at her palm and saw the same mark as before—only this time it would be permanently branded on her hand. 

“Hisssss,” The Man screeched. The lights radiated from the statue and illuminated the whole corridor. He didn’t like the light. Looking away, he took his sword and smashed the statue. The corridor returned to darkness. 

As the statue of the two-faced man came down, it buried Rey among the rubble. The dust clogged her lungs; darkness surrounded her. Despite her best efforts, she felt life escaping her. The Man in Black would win. 

But Rey saw something glowing beside her. It was a beautiful silver, so shiny and new. Rey had never seen something so bright before. It was roughly the size of the Man's blade, but it looked as if a true master crafted it—not a novice student. 

Moving the rubble, she grabbed the object. She couldn't see in the dust, so she had to trust what she felt. She went from feeling the dusty grime of rock to the sleekness of metal. She felt her way to the button—expecting to find in the same place as on the Man's blade. 

"Come on," She thought. "Just give me a chance." She pushed the button down, hoping for a miracle.

Then, at the speed of light, a beautiful blue blade arose out of the shaft. Rey found the strength to cut through the rock and emerge out of the rubble.

"What?" The Man confusedly said. He looked at the sword in her hand. "How'd you get that?!”

Rey looked at the sword in her hand. It felt natural; like it always belonged there. It fit perfectly. She felt her body extend through the blade. It was like her staff, but so much more. There was power in this sword. Destructive power, but also defensive power. The Man could not attack her anymore.

"Hmmph, no matter," He snidely remarked. "You don't know how to use that thing. In your inexperienced hand, it's a bigger danger to you than anyone else." 

The Man in Black lunged at Rey; he pointed his blade right at her. Acting out of instinct, Rey deflected his blow. He tried a downward strike and she blocked it. He tried a spin attack, so she jumped. Whatever he did, she had the perfect counter. 

They continued to fight through the night—the Man fueled by unrestrained anger, Rey by a desire to survive. She was perfectly in control. The unstable Man in Black lost his advantage. He knew he had to turn the tides. If she wouldn’t give into anger, he’d attack her biggest weakness. 

"Rey, you need to accept the truth," He said between blows. "Why are you still searching for your parents? Why are you yearning for them?"

"Because they're out there! I'll find them and I'll find myself."

"No Rey, face the truth. Why have you never heard from them? Why have you never found any evidence of them?"

"Well...I…"

"Rey, your parents are dead!" He put down his blade, raised his hand, and waved it in front of Rey.

Her eyes went beyond the castle seeing a vision of two people who looked like her. They were peasant scavengers on Jakku, celebrating the birth of a child. Everyone was overjoyed. 

Then, tragedy struck. 

Raiders, or monsters, or thugs—she couldn't tell. But someone broke into their home and killed her parents. The baby Rey was left all alone before being discovered by Plutt the next morning. 

The Man was right, her parents were dead.

"No, no, no!" Rey burst and lost her emotions; tears streamed from her eyes, carrying out dust and sorrow. Expecting her to rush at him, the Man assumed an offensive stance. Before, he wanted her anger for power. Now he knew her compassionate side was too strong—she would only suffice only in body, not in mind. Too much risk. 

He had no choice.

He stood over the woman and circled around her, waiting for her next move. Rey sat on the pile of rubble she emerged from—contemplating this realization. She had nothing to fight for now; there was nothing in the castle she was looking for. Why fight? Why go on? There was no one in the galaxy for her. There was nowhere in the galaxy should could call home; no one who truly loved her. 

And yet, she had to go on. The dark spirit which haunted her and brought her to the castle had to be stopped. Rey didn’t know his plans, but she knew they couldn’t be any good for the galaxy. Rey had an obligation to stop him so no other little girls would suffer. She would stop this evil in front of her. 

“I must go on,” Rey said. “They may be dead, but that doesn’t mean they are gone!” 

The two began aggressively dueling in the piles of broken statue. The rocks cut Rey's bare feet, but she couldn't even feel the pain. Rey’s body, mortal and weakened by her journeying, began to fail her. She failed to keep up with him, reacting slower and slower to his strikes. 

With a wave of his arm, he knocked her down to the ground. Her abdomen was open for a fatal strike. All he needed to do was penetrate her chest with one blow—that would be enough to finish her off for good.

But he couldn't do it.

The Man started to tremble and shake. He fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Rey propped herself up. She could have ran to safety, but something pulled her to stay. Seeing him in pain made her forget the anger of her parents.

"No, I wo—" He started to say before stopping. He stood up, now rejuvenated. He was quieter, but more strong. With perfect fluidity and skill, he began to slash his blade around the floor. Dust clouded the whole room—obstructing Rey's vision. In order to tell where he was, she only had the red glow of his blade to guide her. Her eyes were useless. 

She turned around and around, trying to get in position. She couldn't find her way, but knew he'd have as many difficulties as her navigating.

"He's not like a human,” Rey thought “He's different." 

She saw the glow of the red blade illuminating the dust, so he must be near. He emerged out of the cloud of dust like a terrifying nightmare—this black figure coming through the shadows, armed and ready to strike. 

But Rey felt no fear. 

Sure, she wouldn't know her parents. But she was brought to this castle for a reason. Somehow, Rey knew the warnings of the castle were connected to the Man in Black. She had to uncover the secret to find solace for her parents. 

He came out of the shadows and they resumed their duel for the third time. The clash of their blades illuminated the dark room in a bright purple glow. Neither had the upper hand. It was a stalemate. 

The sun started to rise, the storm faded away. The dust faded away. It seemed daylight weakened his powers. He attempted a powerful strike that Rey easily recoiled. He tried again, and once more she blocked. With all his remaining strength he tried his most powerful blow yet. Rey responded by a disarming blow of her own, sending his sword out of his hand. On the back swing, Rey's sword clipped his mask and broke part of it off.

As the sun illuminated the room, Rey glanced as he faded away. Beneath the mask—behind the bit she broke off—was an eye.

A normal, human eye.

A sad eye. 

A dead eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post! Hope y'all liked this more action oriented chapter. Remember the dream, it'll be important latter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her climactic fight against the Man in Black where she finds her sword, Rey explores the deeper depths of the castle.

After the duel, Rey wandered around the labyrinth and interior of the castle without purpose. The statues remained crumbled. The passage to her bedroom had been blocked off—chunks of the ceiling had fallen off, creating something reminiscent of a cave-in. Rey had her makeshift robe on—with her beloved boots and remnants of her staff trapped beyond the blockage. After a while of aimless walking, she sat in one of the many libraries she had come across.

“So what now?” Rey asked. She buried her head in her hands. Her parents weren’t here, but she knew she had to stop that monster from escaping the castle. Rey had no idea what his plans would be—she didn’t even know who he, or it, was.

But still, the parting sight of a human eye surprised Rey. Throughout all her encounters with the Man, she never imagined what would be behind the mask. She never thought it’d be human. 

“He’s not human!” She stood up, knocking the chair to the ground. “No, there’s no way he could human. No one could be that evil.” 

She paced around the room—lit extensively by candles. The candles pulsed with the beat of Rey’s heart.

“But, that’s what I saw. I saw an eye, just like my own…” She thought back to the mirror. Through his dark magic, her own reflection turned into his. But what if that was trying to tell something else? Rey had never been one to read into symbols—yet that stuck with her. 

She looked at the books populating the shelves along the wall. In fact, there wasn’t even any walls in the room. The bookshelves were all stone—carved into the walls. All four sides of the room, with the exception of the door and spots for candles, were full of books. She flipped through a few of them. Most were in languages she didn’t know, some had damage—water, smoke, dust, or just general faded text. 

“Some of these books have to be at least a thousand years old,” Rey said, skimming through the texts. She figured perhaps the books held some knowledge or wisdom which could help her. 

She went through dozens of books, leaving them haphazard across the floor, without finding anything that helped her.

Then, she saw something.

A book, far newer than the rest, caught her eyes due to the title—”Symbols of Ahch-To and Their Meaning”. 

“Well this looks promising,” Rey said, clearing a spot for her to sit on the ground. Because of the robes she wore, Rey sat cross-legged on the ground as she read. Sitting in that position was uncomfortable to Rey—for she had never done it before—but it felt the most natural. 

Opening the cover, Rey saw the book was entirely handwritten. It started off with an introduction explaining the book:

_ When I and the Church of the Force first discovered Ahch-To, we found the ruins of the early Jedi settlements. We didn’t have a lot of time and resources, but I kept a log of a few important symbols. Through a lifetime of work and study, as well as a lot of help, I have been able to identify some of the earliest symbols of the ancient Jedi and what they meant. I have collected them in this text to disperse among my students and the remaining Church members.  _

_ I want to thank Lor San Tekka and his friends for their early help in the text. I want to thank the New Republic for granting me unparalleled anonymity during these years. Lastly, I want to thank my students—especially my nephew Ben—for their insights in helping me edit this work many years after the research. The Jedi are in great hands in the future. _

_ I hope this book will become an invaluable asset in the pursuit of knowledge about the Force. _

_ Luke Skywalker _

“Skywalker?” Rey asked. “That name sounds familiar…” Rey thought of where she could’ve heard the name Skywalker before. It wasn’t a common last name—though many people on Jakku only had one name, as they had no family to give them a surname. 

“Oh I know, the Skywalker Swoop! From the old Rebellion flight manuals I’d read,” Rey had taught herself to fly using these abandoned holos and logs. “So after the war he became some sort of explorer? What’s he got to do with this castle? What are the Jedi?”

The sound of that word agitated something in her—a tremendous pain, like a thousand knives cut her skin out, pulsed throughout her body. The source was her left hand. 

“Owww,” She bellowed and cried. Turning her hand around to get a look, she realized the mark had been altered. She could barely make out the design on the burn, but she could see two wings running parallel to what looked to be a weapon just like the laser sword she found. 

Rubbing her hands to try to soothe the pain, Rey continued to look through the books. She found all kinds of symbols: what appeared to be an ancient Ahch-To alphabet, some drawings detailing events in their history. But Rey didn’t find anything that could help her with the vision of the mirror, or the mark on her hand.

But the book still enthralled Rey. She continued to read it and learned more about the planet thanks to the writings of Skywalker. For a thousand generations, people believed the planet had been lost. It had been the fabled home of the first person to feel the Force, the Prime Jedi, and where they—Skywalker noted no one knew who the Prime Jedi was, if they were even real—had their first students; dubbed padawans.

“Jedi?” Rey thought. “There’s that word again…” Just as she completed the thought, another zing of pain swam through her body. She would have to learn to deal with the pain—though, Rey had been experienced in this thanks to living the life of a scavenger. But this pain was deeper than any flesh wound she got on Jakku. It hurt her very soul. 

“What are the J-” Rey stopped herself before saying the word. “Those things?” She went back to the shelves and looked for any book about the Jedi—anything that could clue her into what was going on here. She figured between the pain at the word there must be some connection between the Jedi and the castle. Maybe even with The Man was somehow connected to all of this.

The books weren’t organized in any discernible manner—just thrown on the shelf—which complicated matters for Rey. As she searched the books, she found a plethora of dry titles: “The History of Ahch-To Wildlife”, “The Biology of a Porg”, “Climatology of Ahch-To”, “Early Antiquity on Ahch-To”. But she found nothing about the Jedi or even this Force concept Skywalker referred too. 

Books continued to spill onto the floor, Rey had emptied out all the shelves in her quest for knowledge. Rey had never been a great reader—for on Jakku, the written word came at a premium—but something about the castle changed her. Rey couldn’t quite explain it, but the castle had begun to change her. She felt more connected to her environment, more conscious of her thoughts and feelings. She always had a strange ability to see things before they happened, but that had been magnified. During her fight with The Man in Black, it was as if Rey knew all of his moves as the fight went on—especially near the end. 

After emptying the last shelf, Rey sat down on the floor. “What am I going to do? None of these books have what I need. Do I just search all the libraries in the castle?” She felt her heart began to race, her blood pressure start to rise.

“No, no, that’s not going to help me…” Her thoughts betrayed her—she thought of seeking out The Man and getting answers out of him. Rey changed positions and sat cross-legged again. She focused on her breath, thinking the natural rhythms of her life could calm her down. She breathed through her right nostril, inhaling all the energy surrounding her and expelled it back into the world through her left. 

She read another one of Skywalker’s books, “The Trees of Ahch-To”. Rey learned that life feeds life—in something called the Force. The byproducts of breath provides the fuel for the trees, which in turn provide the air for the animals to breathe.  _ It’s all linked together—everything working to benefit everything else,  _ the quote from Skywalker inscribed in the front cover said. The energy she breathed in and breathed out fueled the life around her. Even on Jakku—the small green that there is is fueled entirely by the relationship with the people and animals. But something made Jakku different from Ahch-To; could it be the lack of togetherness? 

As she breathed, she focused on the next natural rhythm—her heart; which pulsed with anger fueling her blood for action. But she didn’t need action, no one here threatened her—morning had just broken and The Man only came out at night. She needed to return her heart to its natural state. 

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out. 

Slowly, her heart began to climb back down. It returned to its natural pace; to the rhythm of a calm life. She felt her lungs return to rhythm to her heart, her soul back in right living with her body. Rey had expelled the anger from her body and returned to a momentary peace. 

“My hand,” She said, looking down at her left hand. She could move her fingers without pain; she had no bolts of pain coursing through her body. “That fixed it?” Rey decided she needed to test it. 

“Jedi,” She said. “I need to find out about the Jedi. I need to learn about the Jedi.” There was no pain, but the spot on her hand began to glow a deep blue—matching the color of her laser sword. It drew her eyes in, reflecting its blue glow into her brown eyes. 

When her eyes locked onto the design, a series of visions implanted themselves in her brain. They were disconnected, foggy, and unclear—but Rey could see some of their meaning. They blurred together too. 

She could make out a man—who looked older than the rest of the people. There were also twelve younger folk, who loyally followed the man. There was a thirteenth person; he stood in the back, content with isolation. 

The twelve paid attention to every word the man spoke, but the thirteenth didn’t. He seemed to know everything yet know nothing; something was holding the thirteenth back. The twelve tried to become the man, but they kept failing. They listened to his every word but lacked skill. The thirteenth had mastered the skill but was missing that final piece. She could sense their feelings, but not their shape. 

“It’s...not easy, tense,” She thought. “It looks right but it’s all wrong.

Breaking from the blur, a clear image emerged

She saw the man grow frustrated and worried, upset and frightened at what was going on. He had a choice to make but he didn’t know if he could do it. He needed help, he needed guidance—but he had no one. 

“Those people, on Ahch-To,” She thought aloud. “Could those be the Jedi? Are they linked to this castle?” She thought of the one area she hadn’t yet explored in the castle and figured some clarity could be found there. 

As she walked out of the library, she saw the books strung out all over the floor. She needed to clean it up—not that anyone would be in the library but her, but it felt like the right thing to do.

“This will take a long time, but it must be done,” She said. There was still a lot of daylight left, so she was fine spending a great portion of it fixing this room. It took her several hours, but Rey got the books back on the shelf—this time in alphabetical order. 

When she left the library and entered the hallway, she saw the sun was still in the same position when she left. It was as if no time had passed. She walked past the pile of rubble blocking her way to her bedroom—nothing had touched it since the night.

“I would if I could clean it up,” Rey said. She felt for the sword on her belt. “I could break it up and make a little path…” When she approached the pile, the pain zinged through her again. She grew weak in her knees before backing up. 

“There’s something odd about those statues,” Rey pushed herself off the ground. “Those statues must be linked to the Jedi, their eyes glowed the same color as my hand. But then what would the red ones be? Is there more than just the Jedi?” 

She continued walking through the castle to the door she couldn’t open. The door remained as it was before—a piece of wood blocking a passage, no knob or way of opening it. 

Rey unhooked the blade from her belt and ignited it. The blue glow still struck awe throughout Rey. She couldn’t imagine the process that went into making a weapon like this—it looked so beautiful, yet so powerful. She never had seen something so sleek and timeless on Jakku. Even in the desert, this blade would shine for ages. With the power of the blade, she could easily smash down the door and enter the room.

And yet. 

The more Rey looked at the door, the more she realized that wouldn’t be the right way of doing things. 

“There has to be another way to entering the room without smashing down the door,” Rey said as she intensely studied the door. With her left hand, she felt the door. She learned nothing new: the door was wood, it wasn’t crafted with any guise of aesthetic, and there was no way in. The inside felt hollow so she this confirmed something being behind it, but she could have figured that out before.

“Hmm,” Rey looked at the door and thought further. She looked down at her left hand and wondered if the symbol could give her any insight. Like before in the library, Rey focused on her body’s natural rhythms and tried to center her consciousness. 

With her eyes closed, Rey lifted her left hand and placed it on the door. Beyond her control, her open palm ran along the wooden surface. She traced a rectangle over the door—changing the wood to stone. Her hand then went back to the sword. She knew what she had to do.

Standing a few paces back from the door, Rey took the sword in hand and began carving the stone. First she made a line in the middle—that of hte blade. Then she carved a wing on both sides, with each wing having three markings. With her carving complete, Rey stuck the sword through the center of the drawing. 

The stone immediately opened—revealing a staircase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! A shorter chapter this time, just how things broke out.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey enters into the dark staircase and finds herself swallowed by a cloud.

Rey walked down the staircase. She thought she’d find some sort of subterranean area of the castle with the knowledge she sought. The stairs were very narrow; it was just wide enough to fit her body. The surrounding room room had no light; there were no windows or candles, Rey had to just trust her feeling. Because of the blockage, she still didn’t have her boots on—her bare feet felt all the force of the cold, dirty stairs. Her blade provided only so much light—not nearly enough to illuminate the whole chamber. 

She kept walking down the staircase, mentally tracking how many steps she took. What started as single digits quickly became double; she then crossed the 100s threshold. It felt as if the stairs were going on forever. 

“This must lead somewhere really deep,” She theorized. Still, Rey had pushed her body to greater physical feats before on Jakku in exploring Star Destroyers or other massive finds. Besides, she wasn’t the same person as she was on Jakku. Just as her mental abilities seemed to double, so did her physical. The stairs kept going on—but Rey kept running, still not feeling any exhaustion. 

As she crossed into her thousandth step, Rey paused. 

“No,” She said, as she examined the room. “There’s something going on here, this is another one of those tricks.” As she paused, the room lit up in a flash—temporarily blinding Rey. Regaining her sight, Rey saw a horrible sight. A large black cloud raced down the stairs, chasing after Rey. The Dark force scared Rey. 

She ran down the stairs. She sprinted at a speed she had never reached before. After a while, it was as if she was floating down the stairs. But the cloud kept after her; it continued to gain ground on her. She could barely keep away from it. 

Rey lost count of the stairs in her head. Two thousand? Three thousand? Five thousand? She kept trying to avoid the dark cloud but it kept after her. 

“I don’t think I have a choice,” Rey said. She began to feel tired of all the running. “I think, I think I need to face it.” With her weapon in hand, Rey turned around and faced the cloud. Assuming the same position she did when she dueled The Man in Black, she readied herself for a confrontation. 

The cloud enveloped Rey and took her to a far off land. 

While her body remained stationary, her spirit floated upwards. She merged with the cloud, carrying her through the ceiling of the chamber and outside the castle. It lifted Rey out of Ahch-To—through the atmosphere, breaking through the clouds. The dark cloud, somehow maintaining its shape in the vacuum of space, kept going further. Rey lost her sense of time, lost her sense of direction, but maintained her consciousness. 

The cloud kept going up; planets and stars became small. The very galaxy became small enough to fit into Rey’s bag. All of creation looked insignificant compared to Rey. 

Then it came down.

The cloud began a rapid descent, breaking back into the plane of reality and into the cosmos. Everything became massive again. Rey became more aware of time and space. 

“I’ve been here before.” She sensed around based on the cloud. 

A ship came up beside the cloud, with two big designs on both sides of the ship: the Rebellion’s symbol on one, the Imperial Emblem on the other. Rey had known this ship—it was the one that took her off of Jakku.

“Go….Window….See...Past,” A deep voice echoed in Rey’s mind. The cloud began to move toward the ship, surrounding it entirely. 

Rey slowly coalesced around what appeared to be a physical form—though she wore a white robe instead of brown. She floated towards the window and looked inside. She saw her cage. She saw everything just as she remembered it. 

And she also saw herself.

She saw the thugs coming into her room with the Captain, she saw the fight break out. She saw a fire start. Through the smoke, Rey could see everything she had done—she relieved beating the man within an inch of his life. 

“Dark…feeling...within…” The voice said. It had a strange way of speaking—the deep frequencies of its voice barely registered to Rey. But somehow, Rey could hear beyond the words it spoke. 

“I didn’t know that darkness lived within me,” She thought—her thoughts seemingly echoed throughout all of space. “I thought, I thought I was better than that.” 

“Go...back….fire…” 

“I, I guess I needed to make right what I had done. I did something wrong.”

“But...still...dark...within…”

“It wasn’t that long ago, I guess I just feel guilty? I don’t know. He was a horrible person who did horrible things but still, does anyone deserve that?”

“Deserve...who...you…” 

“Who deserves anything if one doesn’t? Well, do monsters deserve things?”

“Monster...Parents…”

In an instant, the cloud shot back up into the sky and landed on the other side of the galaxy—back on Jakku. The cloud broke the atmosphere of the planet, landing outside a village of folks. 

The people looked as destitute as Rey—wearing dusty, tattered clothes and living in homes smaller than her AT-AT. But the people were all happy. A tremendous occasion had occurred, a baby had been born into the village. This had been the first new birth in a generation in the tightly-knit village. On this evening, under the moonlit knight with only the fire to guide them in the darkness, the village of a dozen left their shoddy homes to party and feast. They didn’t have much, but what they had they shared amongst each other.

The new parents, still with that radiant glow about them, entered the scene. The woman—with tied up hair just like Rey’s held the baby in her arms. Her smile was infectious. A man, the father, stood beside her. He was a short man—not too much taller than the woman He had his hand around the woman’s waist as they walked out into the party gathering. 

“Is that,” Rey began to ask. “Is that me?”

“You…..are….you….”

Rey wanted to reach out and join the celebration. She stuck out her hand to try to break free of the cloud, but it restricted her movements. All she could do was watch the events unfold. 

The party lasted for hours. Soon music started joining, the people started dancing. The signs of new life, of continued life, of renewed life were always worth celebrating. 

Then, in the distance, a ship landed. Out of it came men with guns—clad in old Imperial armor; though the armor looked dusted and worn. They were raiders, thugs—monsters. Jakku was full of gangs like this. A man came out leading the group. He wore dark grey armor and had a large paddle in hand. He said some words to the people, the parents clutched the child hard around their arms. The other ten villagers formed a wall around them—they were resisting whatever the soldiers wanted. The man with the paddle turned around and snapped his fingers, the raiders opened fire on all of them. The ten lay still in the dirt. 

The Father stood his ground. For his defiance, a single shot of a blaster rewarded him. Their guns turned towards the Mother. She enveloped the baby in her own body—giving her own life to spare the child. 

The Mother slumped into the ground. 

But the baby remained.

The raiders stopped in their tracks and fired more shots.

But the baby remained.

They turned to their leader, then the soldiers burned down the whole village—nothing remained. Their celebratory fire became a funeral pyre. The small platoon figured nothing could remain in that fire; no soul could survive the inferno.

But the baby remained.

Throughout the night, the baby wailed and cried out for anyone. There wasn’t a soul for kilometers. The next morning, the still-raging fire attracted the attention of a few scavengers lead by a Crolute with an appetite for money. Finding the baby in the smoldering ruins, he wanted to leave the child. But when the baby looked at him—looked into his eyes—it was as if she looked into his soul. He grabbed the baby along with the other scavenged items from the village. The baby would live, but she’d be treated as any other tool in his quest for money. 

“Dark…feeling...within…” 

“My whole life I wanted to reunite with my parents, to see them,” Rey started thinking as the cloud turned from black to blue. “But I, I don’t know. I carried this burden with me for so long.”

“Shame...dark...you…” 

“Shame? What do I have to be ashamed of? It’s not like I chose for my parents to be slaughtered.”

“Shame...you...live…”

Rey contemplated its words. Why did she live? Why did everyone else die? She saw it as good as anyone could’ve—despite all the attempts, she lived and everyone else did not. She burned in a fire, but emerged unscathed. Maybe she did feel some guilt over it.

“Live...them...future…”

She thought more about it. She knew she’d stop the Man in Black from leaving and doing whatever evil plans he had for her—but she didn’t know why. But now, the obligation she felt to stop him had meaning. 

She would do it for her parents. 

“Seek....dark...still…” The cloud shot up again into the outer reaches of the galaxy, then landed back on Ahch-To. Crashing through the clouds, Rey saw it was nightfall—a storm raged outside. 

As the cloud got closer to the castle, Rey saw light illuminating the windows of the castle: red, blue, a clash of purple. 

“The fight...this is last night?” 

“Ghost...haunt...you…”

“Ghost?” Rey asked. She heard a few tales of spirits on Jakku—of certain valleys or areas haunted by specters of those long passed. Usually these fables were used just to keep children or the gullible out of certain areas, thus leaving their riches and treasures for the more adventurous types. She didn’t think a ghost could be real. “Are you saying the Man in Black is dead?”

“Solo...dead...duo…” Unlike before, Rey couldn’t make out any of the words obscured by his strange way of speaking. The frequencies must’ve gotten even lower. 

Rey saw the climax of the battle—her, in a cloud of dust, breaking off part of his mask. Once more, Rey saw the human eye beneath the mask. She saw how it looked just like her own: brown and deep with sadness. 

“Sympathy...ghost...you”

“Why would I have sympathy for him? He’s a monster who haunts me. He lured me to this planet and attacked me. He planted...thoughts into my head. I don’t have any sympathy for him.”

“Destroy...ghost..you…”

Rey thought on his words. She’s had multiple occasions to destroy him—but she rejected each opportunity. She wanted to stop him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it before.

“Well that was before I knew how evil he was, that’s before I knew he used me.”

“Evil...is...who…”

“What are you saying? He’s not evil? I heard him say what he wanted to do! He wanted to use me for revenge.”

“Revenge...pain...sadness…”

“Revenge comes from pain? What are you saying?”

“Truth...seek….outside”

With that, the cloud warped back to the present. 

“Puuuuuuh,” Rey breathed. Her spirit returned to her body and she found herself at the bottom of the stairs.”What was that all about?” Standing up, she walked down the last step.

At the bottom of the staircase, there was a long hallway. Unlike the stairs, there were candles lighting the hallway. It looked as if no one had been in this part of the castle for a thousand generations—moss grew on the walls, dust settled on the floor. Nothing had been distrubed. 

Rey took a thousand steps without seeing anything else; the same, uninterrupted pattern of stone walls and stone floor continued. On the final step, Rey came upon a hole in the wall. 

“What could this be?” She said. The hole was completely dark, so Rey took out her sword of light and stuck it in to see what was on the other side. However, she couldn’t fit her head in with the blade in the hole. Rey felt the surrounding walls—just like the door to enter this chamber, Rey wanted to feel if they were hollow or full. Surprisingly, they were full. 

Rey couldn't simply break down the wall to find her way through. While the passageway went on beyond the hole in the wall, she fixated on the hole. To continue her journey, she’d have to get into the hole and see what lies in the darkness. 

In order to break through the darkness, Rey did as she did before. Sitting on the cold, wet, and mossy ground, she sat cross-legged. She had gotten better at the practice: emptying her mind, slowing her breath, focusing on her heart. Through her serenity, she could find the wisdom to get her through the tunnel.

“It appears you’ve finally gotten stuck,” A voice said. It was he, the Man in Black.

His presence interrupted Rey’s peace. She looked around in all directions to find where he was, but she couldn’t—for every time she turned her head, he stayed in her line of sight. 

“Where are you?” She asked. “How are you doing this?”

“I don’t know,” He said. “Every time before, I reached out to find you. But here I am,seeing you as clear as day.” The sight of her gave the Man two conflicting urges: to kill her and to reach out to her. He raised his hand out to touch her—but he couldn’t. She looked perfect.

“A shame things had to go this way…” He thought. 

“A shame?” She said. Unbeknownst to him, she could read his thoughts now—just as he could to her. “What do you mean ‘go this way’?”

For several moments, the Man sat in silence doing nothing but watching her face.

“Well whatever, it doesn’t matter,” She said. “I will beat you.”

“And what makes you so confident?”

“Because I know who you are, I know what you are.”

“And really now?” He said, with a sarcastic tone in his voice. “What would I be?”

“A ghost.”

“A ghost?” He snided to hide his concern. “Rey, you’ve been reading too many books. I saw you in one of my libraries, messing up the place.”

“No, you are a ghost,” She confidently stated. “The fear in your voice at the word, I felt it. You aren’t living, you aren’t real.”

“Real…” He started. He grabbed his sword off of his belt and ignited it. “I’ll show you just how real I am.”

Rey, too, grabbed her weapon. “What happened last time you did that?” 

His hand reached up to feel his mask—which he had repaired with some red adhesive. The sight of it reminded Rey of her confrontation with the snake. The pain still carried with him. He hadn’t felt anything in years, but somehow this girl managed to hurt him. And yet, that wasn’t all he felt. 

“Would you like some help in figuring out how to get through?” He asked, changing the subject from his failure—when he focused on emotion, he felt the pull of conflict within. “I did design this castle, I know everything that goes on in its walls. You’d love to see what lies at the end of that tunnel.”

“I don’t need your help,” She barked. “You just want to use me for revenge. You carry shame within you, that’s what you want revenge for. Someone hurt you long ago and you want to make them feel pain. What happened?” Rey paused for a moment, uncertain if she should say what she was about to. But she knew he wasn’t here and she knew she could take him in a fight. “Was it your death?”

That twisted the blade again in his heart.

“Death? You want to know about death?” He said. “I’ll show you death.” He waved his hand, just like the fight to knock her to her feet. 

But she was able to resist it.

“What?” He asked, confused at how she still stood her ground. 

Rey didn’t know exactly what she was doing—but she unconsciously did the same thing as when she tried to get the symbol to glow; she focused on her breath, the pulse of her blood, the tides of her soul.

The soul, that’s where this all comes from.

Rey had never been big on the supernatural, but all this talk of ghosts and these strange powers she felt churning within her questioned her belief. She felt the Man push up against her; she felt him try to overpower her own essence. But through her soul she could push against him. She could resist him. No more would the Man hold dominion over her, no more would she live in fear against the man—through blade or magic, he held no power over her. Through her resistance, they reached a temporary balance; a stalemate.

“Your powers have grown,” The Man said. “Interesting…” 

The vision faded away. Once more, Rey found herself alone in the bowels of the castle—stuck without a clue of how to enter the tunnel. 

Returning to her meditative state, before the Man in Black interrupted her, she found her way through the tunnel—for the size of the whole deceived her. To the naked it eye, it looked no wider than a human head. But when felt through her spirit, Rey saw the hole was significantly larger. She could easily just walk through it, as long as she believed she could walk through it. 

However, something tugged on her too. She felt in the distance, at the highest point in the castle, the ghost stewing in the castle. She could go to him; she could watch him. He’d never know what was going on. Perhaps she could learn more. Perhaps she could haunt him, just as he haunted her.

“No,” She thought. “That wouldn’t be right.”

Instead, she left her meditative state—the symbol on her palm began to glow—and she walked through the wall and into the hidden chamber. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! We're halfway there!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey enters the lowest point in the castle and finds an enemy—who becomes a friend.

As Rey entered the hidden chamber, she found a platform, barely wide enough for her two feet to stand on. If she strayed too far in either direction, she’d plummet to her death. 

“Maybe,” She said. “Maybe it’s like the outside.” Rey closed her eyes and took a step. She took another step. Despite nothing being beneath her, she could walk all the same. She continued on for another a thousand paces—going around in a circle. Rey realized, after making a pass around the circle, she had traced her destination.

“I need to go deeper,” Rey said. With her robe breaking her fall, Rey jumped down the circle into a large underground lake. Remembering her prior experience in water, she swam out of the body of water. The water, unlike the salty water outside the castle walls, was fresh and pure. But it also was freezing and barren of life. The feeling of the water rushing through her loose robe, around her feet, through her hair would always be foreign to Rey. 

When she broke the surface of the water, Rey found that just like on the surface waters of Ahch-To her hair fell down. She saw the reflection in the water, illuminated by the light of her blade. 

“What happened to me?” She said. The face she saw looked nothing like the face she once knew. 

But she was ok with it.

Drying herself off, Rey held her blade up to look around the dark and damp cave. She knew this was the lowest point in the castle; there was nowhere deeper she could go. 

Rey saw a light in the distance. It barely flickered—but it was there. She’d need to reach that light amidst the darkness. Perhaps the light was the sun, breaking through a crack in the wall of the cave. Maybe the light would be her way out of the castle. 

“But do I want to leave?” Rey thought. For the first time, Rey wasn’t certain whether or not she should leave. Sure, she’d have an easier time fighting against the forces of darkness within the castle if she could leave and gather forces and help. But she felt this pull to the castle, this pull to the ghost. 

The Dark Cloud was right about one thing, as much as Rey didn’t want to admit it—she couldn’t destroy the ghost. She wanted revenge on all he had done with her, but if she gave into vengeance she feared she would become the ghost—for a lust for vengeance drove him. She’d carry the guilt and shame and anger with her forever. 

A loud sucking noise distracted Rey’s thoughts; she jerked her head to see what was happening.

“What?” She screamed. The water of the lake began to drain with a tremendous force. It quickly sucked, revealing the dirt beneath the water. It all drained into a small hole at the bottom. 

A silent stillness fell upon the cave.

“BWWWWWWAAAAAAAARG!” 

Rey snapped into action, moving her blade in front to block any threats.

“SSSSSSSCRRRRREEEEA!” The water shot out of the hole and fell all around her, creating giant pools of mud in the dirt floor. Rey sunk into the ground. The cave became saturated. The crater of the lake began to collapse in upon itself.

Emerging out of the wreckage was a monster. Rey had never seen nor heard anything like it before.

It stood at least 50 meters tall, with twelve grotesque legs. The monster had a round and plump body—adorned with dirt, mud, slime, and all sorts of other secretions. These fluids all dripped off its body, joining the mud to create these foul smelling puddles on the ground. Its neck climbed up into the sky, ending in a hideous green beak—moist and ready to strike. Its eyes were black as night, only lacking a lust for blood. Instead, it craved the flesh. On the backside of the monster was a large tail. At the end of the tail was a stinger of some kind. It had three bits to it: a large, boney appendage with a shape end with two spherical masses on the sides. One strike from that would be fatal. 

The monster blocked the pathway to the light; she would have to figure out a way of overcoming it. Rey pulled herself out the mud and started figuring out her plan to best the creature. She looked backwards to see if any of the ground remained solid. She couldn't fight the creature on this level, she’d need to get higher. Behind her, she found some ledges which remained dry, but the ledges were over 100 meters in the air. 

“BWAWWWWWWWWWWWWR!” The monster bellowed and began lumbering towards Rey. It moved slowly, but each step it took gushed mud up from the ground. Yet Rey remained calm, knowing if she let the monster stress her she’d be guaranteed to lose. 

Rey, trudging in the mud, ran to the ledges behind her. On dry ground, Rey could easily outpace the monster. But the feet of the monster were made for this kind of terrain. Rey’s feet, still bare, could barely move in the mud, but she persisted and continued, reaching the end of the path beneath the ledges. 

“Well I reached the cliffs,” She thought, looking to see the monster catching up to her. “Now how do I get up here?” The sides of the walls were far too wet for him to climb up the rocks; she lacked anything to get her some traction. 

The mark on her hand began to glow again—the bright blue reflected in the mud pools, illuminating the cave. Rey closed her eyes to shield herself against the brightness. Her heart began to slow.

“I know,” She whispered under her breath. “I know how to get up there.” Bending her knees, Rey leaped up all 100 meters to reach the top of the ledge. She now had a perfect view of the monster.

From this view, Rey could see a large pink line spanning the back of the monster ending in a white spot at the base of the stinger. The white spot looked weak and squishy compared to the rest of the Beast.

“Perhaps this is its weakness?” Rey asked. Getting a running start, Rey leaped off the ledge to land on the Beast’s back. Her robe got caught in the force of her jump, blowing and breaking her fall. 

When she landed on the back, Rey had hoped the Beast would not notice her. The scaley, hard surface along the sides of the back surely lacked any way of feeling. Its eyes, pointed away from Rey, would have no way of seeing her. She could use the eliminate of surprise.

With her weapon in hand, Rey sneaked towards the spot—still cautious, not wanting to draw too much attention to herself. She placed her sword above the white spot; she positioned it to make the killing blow.

But the monster found her. 

With the stinger-tail, it began thrashing about and fighting Rey. The monster’s body began to shake—it tried to knock Rey off into the mud. Rey tried to balance herself against the monster, but the force of the Beast was far greater than that of her. She had her opportunity to destroy it but she failed. 

The tail took aim directly at Rey—pointing right at her face. It began to shake and tremble, before spraying a white cloud at Rey. The misty substance coated Rey’s skin, stinging and burning. Resisting the urge to scream, Rey knew she had to get this stuff off her rapidly. The burning grew more painful as each moment passed. 

“There’s no water around,” Rey thought. “But there’s ample mud…” Rey had an idea. It’d be dirty and messy, but it’d get the job done. 

She jumped off the monster and into the mud pits below. Caking herself in mud from head to toe, the burning went away. While she felt completely disgusting—even exploring sandy ruins on Jakku never got this dirty—grossness is better than pain. 

The mud also had an added benefit as it camouflaged Rey. With the monster’s eyes all the way up there, she blended in perfectly with the muddy surface below. The grayish tint on her brown robe now blended in with the dark brown mud. In this dark cavern, she’d join the darkness. Slowly crawling her way through the mud, Rey began thinking of a new plan. 

“I suppose I could climb up as before and try to kill the Beast,” She thought. “But that already failed…” Rey began to sink deeper into the mud, submerging herself in the gunk. 

“Maybe…” A thought occurred to Rey. 

Rey burst out of the mud and jumped back up the ledge and onto the monster’s backside. Balancing herself again, the monster noticed her presence. Once more, it began ready to spray her with its poison. The cloud settled on Rey, but the mud protected her. Steadying herself as the stringer recharged, Rey got down and sat cross-legged on the monster’s back. Putting down her sword, she began to mediate. She didn’t know how these strange powers worked, but it seemed she needed to slow down and focus to activate them.

Rey found herself alone with the monster. The whole universe disappeared around them—in the vastness of space. In this place—reminiscent of that she and the dark cloud explored together—Rey stood up and went to the white spot on the monster’s back. She placed her hand on the white spot of the monster—reaching beyond its flesh and into its soul. Within the Beast, she found fear. To Rey, the Beast was the monster. To the Beast, she was the monster. 

“Why are you attacking me?” The Beast said—in a voice a lot higher than Rey imagined.

“You can speak to me?” She said. Rey shouldn’t be surprised; it seemed the strange and unusual became routine in this place. 

“Why couldn’t I? We all have thoughts,” The Beast said. “We’re all alive.”

“Not everyone,” Rey looked around. Outside the light of the Beast and her, it was totally dark. “The dead walk among us in this castle.”

“The dead? What is death?” 

“The opposite of being alive.”

“Opposite? I’ve always been alive.”

“Well that can’t be true, a time existed before you were born.”

“Did it? How can you say?”

“Well...things happened. Where I’m from there are ruins. I didn’t see these ruins form, but they are there so I know something happened to turn these ships into ruins.”

“But these caves have been my home forever! Nothing has ever changed here. How could I know of a before?” 

“Well…” Rey didn’t have a good answer. “Surely you must have parents? There must’ve been something that birthed you into this world? They’d be proof of a past?”

“Parents?” The Beast looked confused. “What does that word mean?”

“Um, well it’s like there’s people—err whatever you are—that created you. You know, biology?”

“Created me? But I’ve always been here. I’ve never known any parent or creator or maker. Have you?”

“Well...no, I never knew my parents.”

“So you created yourself too!” The Beast became excited. “You are like me!”

“I mean I had parents, I never knew them. They died right as I was born.” 

“How do you know this?”

“I saw them, in a vision,” She said. “I saw my family.”

“A vision?” The Beast raised its eyes in confusion. “You can see things like I can? Are you sure you aren’t like me?”

“Wait, you can see the past?” 

“The past? Ah, time. I know what time is...the one who came here before asked about time. He taught me about time. Past, present, and future are nothing. To me these are just words.”

Rey ignored his thoughts on time. “Another came here? Who was he?”

“He was a tiny folk like you, I could’ve crushed him with my little toe if I wanted to!” 

Rey knew he met the Man in Black. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to know how he could go back in time. I told him I didn’t know anything of the sort. So he took out his laser sword, just like yours, and began to strike me. So I tried to strike him back! But I couldn’t land a single blow. I made a little hole in the cave in my attempt to escape. He didn’t like that at all!”

“Yes, he doesn’t like the daylight.”

“Daylight...is that the warmth I felt?” 

“Oh yes,” Rey thought back to her childhood—constantly surrounded by the sun, strangled by the warmth of the day. This creature had never seen the light of the sun. The idea of it overjoyed the Beast. “There’s plenty of it beyond the castle walls.”

“Beyond the walls?” The Beast began to think. “In here I am the only thing, but out there they may be more. What if there are others like me?”

“The only way you’ll find out is by leaving your cave.”

“But what if I’m feared out there? What if the others don’t like me?”

“That’s just the risk you take leaving what you know and going into what you don’t. Recently I had to do the same.”

“Were you scared?” The tone of the Beast’s voice reminded Rey more of a child than an adult. 

“Scared,” Rey pondered that. “Scared...yes, I suppose I was scared. There’s a life you leave behind and you’ll never get it back. Things may get better, things may get worse—”

The Beast interrupted Rey. “How are they for you? Better or worse?”

“Worse,” Rey said without hesitation. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t get better. It’s just like climbing a mountain.”

“Mountain?” The Beast asked. “Is that something on the outside?”

“Oh yes, they’re like…” Rey struggled to describe one. “Wait, why don’t I just show you a mountain? You could make that hole bigger and we could swim across the sea and you’d see all the mountains you wanted.”

“Mmmm, that would be nice.” The mucus coating the monster began to fade, the spikes and stingers retreated. 

“Earlier you spoke of family,” The Beast said. “What is that?”

Rey paused for a moment. She didn’t really know what a family is. 

“It’s like, it’s like when someone cares about you. And they would die for you and help you with anything.”

“Family…” The Beast became more docile. “I like that word…”

“So do I,” Rey knew at this moment she and the Beast were more similar than different.

Light re-entered the darkness and the Dark broke into Rey and the Beast. She felt the strength of her connection with the Beast fading away; soon she would no longer be able to speak with the creature. 

“Rey….thank….you…” The Beast said, in a voice growing lower and lower—almost the same as the cloud. 

“Wait!” She exclaimed. “I’m sorry for scaring you earlier. I didn’t mean you any harm, I guess I was scared too.”

“Fear….bad….” With that, Rey returned to the normal world—seeing once more the muddy cave around her. The Beast, with one bash of its head, made a giant chasm in the cave. The entire chamber became flooded with water. The Beast, with speed unmatched, swam through the water. Rey struggled to both hold her breath and keep on the monster’s backside. It seemed as if the Beast’s natural place was in the water. 

Breaking through the surface, Rey felt the warmth of the sun on her skin. The water evaporated off, leaving behind a layer of salt. The water washed away her coat of mud and cleaned her robe. All the signs of being nature were welcome to Rey. Finally, she was out of the castle walls. 

A smooth journey awaited her. The Beast took a longer path to the shoreline than expected—for it needed more space to land then Rey would alone—but this was fine for Rey. The calm seas were incredibly relaxing. She drifted peacefully along the sea. She used the moment to rest; she hadn’t slept in days at this point. With the sun beating down on her and the ocean breeze in the air. The cries of the Porgs in the distance sang a lullaby, whisking Rey off to sleep.

As she slept, a cold wind blew off the sea and onto the Beast. The wind wrapped around way, sending a chill throughout her body. 

_ Whether fate or The Force, the Man in Black had been brought to the desert girl once more. Before, he chose when these happened—he used them entirely for his own benefit. But something had changed. He didn’t have absolute power anymore. Her strength in the Force had grown exponentially and she didn’t even know it yet. She’d be a powerful tool. She could get him everything he ever wanted; she could be the servant for his revenge. If she wouldn’t join him willingly, it would just take a flick of his saber for her to no longer have a choice.  _

_ But he couldn’t do it. _

_ He wanted to, he was called to—but he couldn’t do it. _

_ Instead, he’d just watch her sleep until he disappeared. She was so peaceful, so stunning—like an angel.  _

“I’ll get to the shore…” Rey spoke as she drifted in and out of slumber. “...and then I’ll try to find anything I can about Luke Skywalker...”

“Skywalker?!?!?!?!?!” The Main in Black screamed. His better sensibilities and demeanor went to the wayside at the sound of that name. The power of his voice whipped up a powerful current, knocking theBeast back and forth. The sweet song of the Porgs turned into a cry as they began to scatter all around. “How do you know that name?”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Rey yelled, jerking her head around to look for him. She couldn’t find him anywhere. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

“Nevermind that, how do you know Skywalker?”

“No, I think it’s pretty important to know where you are, considering you tried to destroy me before,” Rey looked around but couldn’t find him. 

“I can’t leave the castle, you know this…especially with all that water around.”

“Oh right, you’re scared of water” She said. “You wouldn’t have captured me if you could’ve. Well it’s too late for you ghost-boy, I’ve escaped your castle. I am free to stop you!” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” He ignored anything she had to say. “Where is Skywalker? What do you know about him?”

“Why are you so concerned about this Skywalker fellow, anyway?”

“You want to know, do you really want to know?”

“Well of course I do. If he scares you so much, then he’ll help me to stop your evil ways.”

“Fear…” He paused for a moment. “You tamed the Beast. Impressive, impressive…”

Rey stared at him for a while. She couldn’t see beneath the mask, but Rey could sense his uncertainty and fear. In this silence, Rey realized just how much fear ruled over this restless and twisted soul. 

“Very well, Rey,” He started talking again. “I said I’d show you death.” A puff of black smoke involuntarily spat out of the Beast’s stinger and onto Rey’s eyes.

“Uhchuchuchuh,” Rey coughed. Her eyes watered and became scratchy. Rubbing her eyes, she opened them and found herself in a strange place. 

_ There were huts—thirteen of them, identical in size and material. They weren’t fancy at all. They were meek and built of simple twigs and leaves. There was a fourteenth shelter, even more modest than the others. It was nightfall. Twelve innocent souls slept peacefully. A thirteenth rocked and wrestled aimlessly in bed—restlessly waiting for the nightmares of night to pass. A fourteenth soul paced around. Uncertainty dominated his mind.  _

_ This soul was Luke Skywalker. _

_ The man, for no particular reason, ran into the hut of the wrestless boy. He didn’t like what he saw in the boy’s mind; he never liked the boy too much anyway. He was scared of the boy, just as his parents were when they sent him off to live with his uncle. They promised his uncle would teach him to make the bad dreams go away. He’d become strong and powerful, just like his parents. Just like his uncle. Just like everyone expected him to be. _

_ But the dreams got worse. The fear grew stronger. The anger took over him. The isolation, the loneliness chained him. The guilt overpowered him. He had made no progress. _

_ Something scared his uncle. But instead of working to make things better, he decided to just end it—a permanent solution to what should’ve been a temporary problem.  _

_ He killed the thirteenth child. He killed his nephew. He killed Ben Solo _

_ He created the Man in Black. _

“Ben…” Rey started. “Your name is—err, was Ben?” Despite never seeing more than his eye, Rey thought that name fit. 

“It was,” Beneath the mask, the Man’s voice began to crack. “Before my uncle stole my humanity.”

“What happened to your uncle, to Skywalker?

“He exiled himself to Ahch-To, to run away from his crime,” The Man in Black said. “That’s why I’m trapped here.”

“Ahch-To...the old man...” Rey said, thinking of the strange encounter she had with an old man on the island. She didn’t ever get a good look at what Skywalker looked like, but it fit perfectly. “He, he killed you????”

“Yes, the man on the island. That’s my murderer.” Through the vision, Rey felt humanity still churning within the spirit. He stood up out of his throne—wherever he was in the castle—and walked close to Rey. Separated by miles, he was right beside her. 

“Rey, you have the power to get vengeance for my death! Use these powers, use the sword to get my revenge I’ll never live again like you can, but you alone can make justice.”

“But what if?”

“I can’t reach out anymore,” The Man said, his voice began to crack into a thousand pieces. “When you have done what you must, seek me out in the spire of the castle. Then you will get what you deserve.” 

Rey’s calm sail across the sea had become turbulent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post! Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey returns to the island of Ahch-To, hellbent on finding answers.

The seas grew choppy as the sun faded into darkness. A blanket of dark clouds quickly covered the sky. The heavens opened up, dropping a deluge into sea. 

“What do I do, what do I do?” Rey asked. “Skywalker may know the answers I seek, but how can I trust him?” 

Rey looked down at the mark on her hand. “How I can trust you?” She asked her hand. “The Jedi, that’s who Skywalker was. That’s who the Man...no, Ben was.”

Ben. 

Her tormentor had a name. He was once a human just like her—with human thoughts and feelings. He had dreams and hopes, fears and insecurities just like her. He had eyes, he had a name. He was a person—and Skywalker stole that from him. 

“But what if he had a good reason?” Rey contemplated. “What if, what if…” Rey thought hard. She thought back to the library, to the vision her palm gave her. She recalled thirteen students and a teacher, with a prevailing sense of dread settling over all. 

“That’s him, that’s Skywalker,” Rey said. “That’s Ben…” He had all the skills of Skywalker, far outpacing the other students, but he failed at something important. But the vision was cloudy and her recollection wasn’t perfect, so she didn’t know what the failure was.

“Maybe that motivated Skywalker to—” Rey couldn’t bring herself to say the word. “To do that.”

The waters grew choppier. The sea rocked the Beast from side to side; Rey struggled to keep above the water. It turned its head around to look at Rey—a look of fear took over its face. Rey couldn’t hear him anymore, but she listened to its emotions. The waters terrified the Beast, it couldn’t handle them much longer.

Rey rubbed the Beast’s neck, “It’s ok, we’re almost there.” She had no idea where they were in the sea, for at this point the sky was pitch black, but Rey knew honesty of her ignorance would hurt and not help. If the two of them were going to survive, they both needed to believe in the coming land. 

“If only there was something I could do,” Rey said as she looked up to the sky. “Something to break the darkness.” She took out her blade and lit it up—but that barely made a difference. The clouds were too deep, the rainfall too intense. Rey couldn’t even feel how wet the rain made her, the isolation she felt in the ocean dominated her. Hopelessness creeped up on her. 

“No, I must,” She panickedly said. “There has to be way, there has to be something I can do...I can’t, I need to do something.” She clenched her right hand around the sword. Her left hand, the one with the mark, was left open. She faced the storm—growing stronger by the minuted—head-on. The Beast kept pushing forward best as it could. Whatever happened would happen. The Darkness grew stronger, it may swallow up Rey and the Beast—but they were going to try.. Nothing would stop them as long as they had each other.

A bolt of lightning cracked from the sky.

Rey couldn’t see it. She couldn’t feel the heat nor hear the thunder quick enough to react. The bolt came mere millimeters from striking Rey’s head.

But, through instinct or some supernatural reaction or luck, Rey held her left hand up. Her open hand; the one with the mark of the Jedi.

The bolt struck her hand—lighting the mark and her eyes bright blue. A powerful current charged through Rey’s body. Her heart, for a moment, completely stopped. Somehow, Rey felt all the blood in her body cease to flow. The source of life, the source of energy was gone. She had died but yet she lived. 

The current charge through her heart and into her right arm—the one with the closed fist, the one armed with the sword. The bolt entered into the sword, into the blade of light. Rey’s heart began to dance with the song of life again.

“Hyyuuuuah!” She screamed, charging her sword to the sky. The bolt of lightning came out her blade and shot back into the dark storm clouds. The bold charged through the clouds, racing through its origin. 

In a flash, the black clouds exploded in a burst of light. The clouds broke up, immediately giving up their moisture back to the sea, clearing the sky. A wave of colors overtook the sky. From the chaos, a purple hue emerged in the sky—covering all of the blue Ahch-To sky. The choppy seas returned to their natural state of serenity.

“I’m...I’m alive,” Rey exasperated. She looked around to see the completely changed weather. “Did I do this?” 

Rey looked into sea for her reflection again. She thought of the time before, when she crashed on Ahch-To. She was uncertain, she didn’t recognize the face she saw. The next time, in the cave where she met the Beast, she again didn’t recognize the face. But that time she had no uncertainty. 

“Who am I?” She asked, sitting and draping her feet off the side of the Beast into the water. 

She thought for a moment of all she’s done: leaving Jakku on the ship, escaping her prison, confronting violence, meeting the Porgs, entering the castle. All connected to the Man in Black.

Everything Rey had done, everything Rey had been called to do—everything came from him. From his desires, from his wants. From what he yearned, from what he wished. She had been little more than a tool—a piece in his puzzle for revenge. 

“But I’m…” Rey continued to be mesmerized by her reflection. She looked different, but she knew this face. It was the face of strength. It was the face of resolve. It was the face of a woman who was no longer going to be pushed around anymore. “I’m stronger than him.”

Ben told her what to do when she got back to the island—kill Luke Skywalker, the man who killed him. Rey knew killing him wasn’t right, Skywalker would need to face justice. But she also knew violence would only cause more violence. Violence would only continue the guilt, give more power to anger, make another broken and lonely soul. Violence could only come from fear. Luke was scared of Ben, so he killed him. That’s not right. But Ben wants Luke to die because he’s still scared of Skywalker. That wouldn’t be right either.

Rey had to do something. A wrong had been committed, yet justice had not been delivered. The strife kept the whole planet under turmoil; it kept two souls from resting at peace. Through no choice of her own, Rey had been sucked into this drama. But now she had a choice of how to resolve it: with the closed fist or the open palm. 

Before she could decide, the Beast honked and squealed to signal land was approaching. The waters on the shore were so shallow the Beast couldn’t approach. Rey would have to go the rest of the way alone.Rey got off the Beast and began the journey through the muddy waters. Before she went, Rey made sure to say one last thing to her new friend.

“Thank you,” Rey said, as the Beast bent its head down to get on Rey’s level. “For all your help.”

“Thank you…” The Beast replied, surprising Rey. “For believing in me.”

With that, the Beast swam away. Quickly, the Beast went beyond the horizon and into depths unknown. Rey hoped the Beast would find belonging; that the Beast would find the community it yearned for. 

The hike back up the beach and onto the mountainside took a lot less time than before, as Rey’s new powers made these physical feats significantly easier. She blazed right up the mountain and overlooked the valley where the village she saw Skywalker rested. 

Nothing had changed, the village remained just as Rey left it—frozen in time, stagnate. In the distance she could see lights coming out of just one of the fourteen buildings she saw before. Skywalker still must be waiting there.

“What could have pushed him to murder?” She asked. Rey had known of murderers on Jakku before, but these were murders were rational. Someone wanted to steal something from someone else, or they wanted to claim a certain piece of land. It wasn’t justified, but it could be explained in a way that made sense. 

But this? Ben was just a boy, Luke was a man. He had more power than Ben. He was a teacher, a master, a mentor. He had a responsibility as a family member to teach and guide him—something Rey never had. Rey began to realize she and Ben were the same in a way, both grew up alone: Ben rejected by his family, Rey had hers stolen. Just as easily as she became Rey, she could have become the Man in Black.

“That doesn’t excuse anything,” Rey said, contradicting her own thoughts. “It doesn’t give him freedom to become evil.” She tried to use reason to explain away her emotions, but it failed—conflict continued to pull at her heart. 

With the sun setting above the mountains, Rey knew the time had come. She’d need to make her return to Skywalker and get these answers—whether he wanted to give them or not. 

“A shadow would help me,” Rey said. “Some surprise, a bit of secrecy…” She searched for anything to give her some cover, but found nothing. “The darkness of night is probably my only chance.”

Rey looked up to the sky, staring as the sun slowly began to set. The blue skies transitioned to red—taking seemingly all of eternity to get there. 

“If only I could speed this up, if only I could bring a little darkness…” Rey brought her hands together and bowed her head. With her eyes closed, Rey tried to imagine what she’d do. There’d be the darkness of the night coupled with a low fog brought on by the ocean. Through the quiet stillness around, she’d be able to sneak around and not alert the man. For all Rey knew, he could be armed and dangerous. He could pose a threat to her life. 

Rey let go of her hands and opened her eyes. The sun had barely moved—the sky was still more blue than red—the land was as open and visible as ever. 

“Hmmph,” She sighed. Rey hated the waiting. She spent enough of her life waiting, she wanted action.

Rey looked to the ocean, remembering the power she felt over the seas and the skies once the bolt of lightning struck her. She yearned to channel that power once more—to aid her in her time of need. 

Facing her body to the ocean, Rey sat cross-legged. She raised her arms, with her fingertips pointed to the water. Closing her eyes and opening her mind, Rey focused all her essence on the flow of the water. Through her focus, Rey picked up the rhythm of the seas. The slow and gentle current of the waves reverberated through her soul and into her body. Her heart shifted to match the beat of the water; moving in time with the sea. 

With this unity, Rey could move the water. She lifted it from the chains of the water and into the air, moving it to the village. Settling it over the valley, the water quickly turned into a fog setting on the land. In time, the sunlight turned into moonlight. A dark and ominous cloud, once more, hung over the village. It became cold—colder than any night in the Jakku desert. 

Rey made her way down the valley and into the foggy village below. She was on the exterior—still far from his hut. In order to not make even a peep of noise, she crawled along the ground. The soft and slightly damp soul didn’t kick up any dust on her robe, but it wasn’t so wet it turned into mud. Her plan had been going perfectly; she was halfway from the hut. 

“Bwwwaak! Bwwwak!” A bird chirped. Rey turned around to see a familiar face beside her.

“Porgy?!?!?!?” Rey hadn’t thought of the bird in quite a long time, which she lamented. He was the first friend she made on the island—the first friend she ever really had in life. He stayed loyal to Rey, standing by to watch over the village just as she instructed. “I’m so thankful to see you here, how are you?” 

“Bwwooo!” The bird squawked. 

“Good, good,” Rey patted the bird on the head. She couldn’t understand the bird’s language, but she understood his feelings. He was elated to see Rey again—he never gave up hope that she’d return. “But I need you to be quiet, I’m going to see the man. Porgy, I’m going to figure out what’s going on on this planet. Is he still in there?”

Porgy looked deep in thought for a moment before honking an affirmative honk.

“Thank you, I’m grateful for all your help,” Rey replied. “I will return before I go back to the castle, after I see this man.”

Rey crept up to his hut, slowly marching through the village. She knew this wasn’t the village where Ben died—as Luke exiled to Ahch-To after the fact—but she noticed an ironic coincidence. There were fourteen huts in the village, just as there were fourteen when Ben died. No matter how he tried, Skywalker couldn’t escape his past. 

Rey peeked into his hut, through where the light emanated. The source was a small lantern, with barely enough light to stave off the darkness. It looked to be old and running on some sort of oil or natural fuel. Seldom on Jakku did Rey see something as antique as that, but she remembers finding old things like that among some of the more ancient ruins. 

Skywalker slept on a small cot—by the looks of it, it appeared to be some sort of military equipment. When she first met him, before she knew who he was, Rey had thought his unkempt hair and beard were merely a fashion statement. Now she knew what they really were, a sign of a broken man without a reason to live. The guilt must’ve eaten away at him. 

“But it should,” Rey thought. “He should feel miserable. He killed an innocent soul.” The thought of anyone dying at the hands of someone who should’ve loved them angered Rey. She grabbed the sword from her belt and silently slithered into the hut. With one strike of her blade, Rey could end all of it: his guilt-ridden existence, the pain of Ben. The dark cloud over the island would be lifted.

But she couldn’t.

She hovered over him as he slept—the pain marked his face. He wasn’t evil or wrong, just confused and lost. She could see it in his heart.

“No, that’s not right,” Rey said as she hesitated with her saber still in hand. “I can’t...what would that even do?” Her anger began to dim in the presence of light. She left the hut and paced around—circling it like a shark in the ocean. Her mind wandered off, she lost her senses. A heart began to race at the speed of light. A chill penetrated Rey’s bones—freezing her core. 

She walked into the hut again, hoping the light would break the cold. She stood over Skywalker, watching his chest move up and down as he breathed. His breath was irregular and troubled. She grabbed the sword again, thinking about bringing an end to him would be out of mercy. He was in pain—physical and emotional. No one should live a life in pain anyway. Surely he’s just waiting for natural causes to end his existence. All she’d be doing would be expediting the process. 

“But who am I to end a life?” She asked. “What power do I have?” Again, she put the sword back on her belt. 

She considered it from the perspective of Ben. She never had anyone to love her; she never had a family—so she had to really dig deep to imagine it. She pictured what it would be like to have someone you look up to, someone you respected violate your dignity in such a manner. What would it be like to see this family member hold a weapon above you? What would it be like if this was the last thing you ever saw? These questions weighed on Rey’s mind. 

“And his parents…” Rey remembered—Luke wasn’t his father, Luke was his uncle. So Ben must have a father and a mother out there somewhere. More questions entered Rey’s mind: Who are Ben’s parents and do they know what happened to their son?

Or is it possible that…

“No, no way,” She thought. “I couldn’t, he wouldn’t feel so broken if he did that.”

Rey grabbed her sword a third time and looked at in her hand. She remembered when she first picked up the weapon. She felt immense power—stronger than she ever felt before. She could destroy anything she wished too. But yet, she felt restraint. She felt a heightened responsibility upon holding this blade. Rey never had a taste of power before in her life—she’d been pushed around and subservient to others her entire life. But she knew from watching her prisoners and masters what not to do. She knew that one must be cautious with all this power. 

Something Skywalker was not.

But Rey couldn’t make the mistakes of the past. She couldn’t repeat the failings of those that came before her. She didn’t know what a Jedi was, why she had these powers, or why she felt this immense fixation to this tragedy. But she did know what her heart told her—violence would only cause more violence. 

She moved the sword from her right hand to her left—the one with the mark of the Jedi. She threw her weapon as far as she could; far enough that, if her better senses left her, she couldn’t grab the sword. In the distance, she heard a bird flap its wings and grab the blade.

There’s nothing like a friend.

Rey entered the hut again; her mind regained and her heart returning to the natural rhythm. As she walked by the lantern, she extinguished its small source of light—wanting the hut to be in complete darkness. On the dirt floor, Rey sat cross-legged. She closed her eyes to the darkness, bowed her head, and imagined a better world—one without pain, one without loss, one without suffering. This world was impossible, however. But a more perfect one could be attainable if people tried to heal instead of hurt. 

Just like her and the Beast.

A permanent night settled on the island. Without the light of the sun to awaken him, Skywalker could sleep forever. But to Rey, this was fine. She had unlimited time. He’d wake up when he was ready to be awoken. 

Rey lost track of the time—hours, days, weeks, months could have passed. It may have even been a whole year. Time seemed to have a way of standing still on the island. But in her mind, she lived in her own world. She used this time to explore her body, her mind, her soul. She couldn’t find answers to the questions she wanted to answer, but she found what she needed. A single Force united all life in the galaxy, from the smallest plants to the largest animals. The Force and life live symbiotically, flowing and benefiting each other. Through the Force, life is given. Through life, the Force is created. 

The insights of peace were finally interrupted by a disgruntled man.

“The light? The light?” He asked as he fumbled around in the darkness. “Where is the light?”

“I put it out,” Rey said. “Just as you did…”

Skywalker turned around in his cot and saw his greatness nightmare. A hooded figure, sitting in the mediation position of the Jedi. Only one person would know that stance. Only one would go through all the trouble to find him. Only one would seek to strike him down like this.

“But that’s impossible,” He said. “I….you’re….”

Rey stood up—still concealed by the darkness. Because of it, Luke couldn’t see her height or her figure—she was not the tall, girthy Ben Solo he knew. 

She looked out the window, which hung above Skywalker’s cot and straight ahead in Rey’s field of vision. The eternal darkness still covered up all of Ahch-To. Rey figured it was time to break it.

Slowly raising her arms, the darkness began to fade from the land. The sun had been awoken and the moon put to sleep. As she did it, Rey’s eyes and the mark on her hand turned a bright blue. Rey had the power to destroy through the sword, but she also had the power to create through the Force. 

Light flooded the room—embracing both Rey and Skywalker in the warmth. He opened his eyes and saw a blue figure in front of him. 

“You…” He said. “You’re the girl, the one who wouldn’t leave me alone…” 

He stared at her face for a bit. Because of the hood, he couldn’t see much. But he knew she had changed. He felt immense power in her. For a moment, he thought perhaps she was under the control of his nephew. But upon further thought, he knew this power was all of her own. Luke only knew of one individual possessing such power before—Ben Solo.

“And I’ll never leave you alone,” Rey said. “Not until I get some answers.”

“Answers?” Luke replied. There was no way she could know his secret. At least that’s what he forced himself to believe. “About what?”

“About Ben.”

Luke took a deep breath. 

She knew.

He’d have to face his past.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Luke Skywalker meet, as Rey seeks to learn the truth of what happened to Ben Solo

_ He couldn’t stick around his camp, he couldn’t continue teaching his students. The Jedi, the Force, all the knowledge he had sought and possessed and journeyed for his whole life—it was too burdensome. No one was pure enough in the heart to bear the load.  _

_ It would end with him. _

_ He’d leave, he’d go far away from everyone: civilization, his students, his sister. _

_ Leia. _

_ Oh God. _

Rey lowered her hand and ceased peering through his feelings. Skywalker remained silent the ordeal. Yet, the cry of his heart was so strong in the Force. Rey never knew a soul could be so broken, so full of remorse. If his mind wouldn’t talk, his heart was more than willing to cooperate.

“Leia?” She asked. “Who’s Leia?”

The sound of that name, which Luke hadn’t heard in years, caused a great panic on his face. His eyes dropped, his lip began to quiver and tremble. A tear grew in his left eye.

“She was...is,” He started, struggling to talk. Luke couldn’t face his past for his own sake, but he needed to now—for no one else than his sister. “My sister.”

“His mother...” Rey said, staring off into space. 

His head slouched down into his chest. “Yes,” He mumbled. “His mother.”

In some small way, this fact made her feel worse. He felt the love of a mother yet he still turned into this monster. He became a demon despite all the love he felt.

There had to be more to the story. 

Rey knelt down on the ground and lifted his head up. She looked down, straight into his eyes—his weak, broken eyes. 

“I want you to give me the whole story,” She told him. “It’s the only way any of this can be made right. Why did you kill Ben?”

“It’s…” 

“It’s?” She repeated back at him. “Come on, I need an answer.”

He took a deep breath. For the first time in years, Luke felt life run through his body. 

“My sister was scared. She loved her son,” He stopped for a moment, thinking of the way Leia’s face would light up when she talked about Ben. “But she was scared…”

“Why was she scared?”

“Her son, he’d get so angry and sad. These fits of rage would turn him into some kind of monster, something he never was before.”

Rey thought about the word—monster. She thought the same thing too; he’d get angry and aggressive. But she never saw anything to love about Ben. Pity, sympathy perhaps. But love? 

Of course, it’s not like Rey knew what love was. She loved things. She knew what the concept of love was. Through the cloud, she could see that her parents seemed to love her—but she never knew them. She never experienced love; either loving someone or them loving you. 

Her loneliness continued to restrict her; it chained her from truly understanding life. 

“Why were you involved?”

“She thought, well,” He looked around the room, still in awe how this girl could raise the sun. “She thought I could help him. Maybe, maybe I could get him to move beyond his anger. Move beyond his sadness. Find a level of peace and growth? I don’t know. I wasn’t cut out to teach. I’m no Yoda, I could never train a new generation of Jedi.”

“Jedi?” She asked. That’s the word which gave her so much pain, the word she kept finding throughout the books in the castle. “What’s a Jedi?”

“Jedi?” He replied. “You don’t know what a Jedi is?”

“No, should I?”

Luke thought back to his youth—growing up on Tatooine, isolated from the rest of galactic society. He wanted nothing more to get off that rock, to see the stars and set foot on new worlds. He had no idea about the true nature of life, about the true origins of the Empire, the Jedi or Sith, about the Force. That all changed once he met Ben.

Ben.

“The Jedi were a group of people who studied and learned from the Force,” Luke started. “We tried to understand it, to learn about its power and how it connects all beings together.”

“The Force, yes I know that part,” Rey started. “It’s what unites the hearts of all beings, no matter how small. Across the stars, it links together all.”

“How did you learn of the Force?” He asked. 

“Well, in the castle I…”

“You made it inside?” His eyebrows raised in shock. Throughout all his previous journeys to Ahch-To, he never saw the castle. But when he came back to the planet for the last time, a large castle sprouted up out of the sea. Luke tried to sail to the castle, but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t enter the water. He wanted to, but he couldn’t go into the sea. Other water on Ahch-To he could: the rivers he fished, the lakes he bathed in, the other oceans. But this sea, the one with the castle, he couldn’t get in. He tried to get pulled in by the tides—but this one sent out no tides. The waves all broke fall before it reached the shoreline. 

“Yeah, I did,” She said. “I saw...all kinds of strange things in there. It was bizarre, a world like I’ve never seen before.”

Luke sat in silence for a moment, uncertain how to ask his question. “Did…”

“Yes?” 

“Was…” Luke had long suspected the one reason he couldn’t enter the castle, but he didn’t think it could be real. No one had managed to escape death like that before.

“What’s your question?” Anger began to grow in her voice—anger that scared Luke. 

“Is my nephew...in there?”

“Yes, no,” Rey said. “I don’t know, I…” She didn’t know how to phrase it. “There’s something in there, something evil. It was your nephew, at one point. But I don’t know what it is now.”

Rey sat down next to Luke, slumping her own head into her body. The resolve and confidence Luke sensed in her before was diminished—but not entirely gone.

“He called me here, called me from my home,”

“Where is that?” 

“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere’s nowhere,” He said. A sense of odd nostalgia settled on his heart. “I know that all too well…”

“Really now?”

“I was from a nowhere planet.”

“Can’t be worse than mine…”

“Ever hear of Tatooine?”

“Tatooine?” She replied. Of all the planets she studied on star charts from the Imperial archives on Jakku, she never saw a Tatooine.

“I wished so much to leave that planet as a boy. I wanted to see the galaxy,” It had only been a few moments, but ever since this girl came into his hut he began reflecting on his life. A lifetime’s worth of emotions and experiences flooded back into his brain—some he had pushed into the dark corners of his mind. “I never knew just how big the galaxy would be. Did you ever want to leave?”

“No, no, I never did,” She replied. “I thought, I thought one day my parents would return. I was abandoned on Jakku.”

The Force began to re-enter Luke’s heart. He began to sense not just the girl’s strength, but her weakness. There was tremendous pain within her heart.

“I’m sorry that happened to you, I never knew my parents either growing up…” He thought of when he did finally meet his father—how confused and angry he was with him, but also the love he felt deep within for the man who tortured the galaxy. “So you said he lured you? How did he do that?”

“Dreams. He came to me in my dreams, he gave me visions of my parents. Or at least who I thought were my parents…”

“How do you know they weren’t your parents?” Luke held out a bit of hope his nephew—or whatever is left of him—hadn’t succumbed to darkness to such a point that he’d exploit someone’s pain like that.

“Well, in the castle, I later did see my parents. I saw how they died,” Saying the word hurt Rey’s heart. The unfortunate reality, no matter that she had accepted it, would always hurt her. “The woman he showed me looked like my mother, but the man nothing.”

“What else happened in the castle?”

“I fought him. He kept invading my dreams. One night it came to blows. He used some sort of special sword—it had a blade of light.”

“His lightsaber, that’s what he used,” Luke said. He thought back to how proud the boy was to finally build a saber. He struggled to get a functioning saber, despite him knowing all there was about the theory of saber design. “How did you fight him?”

“Well, I didn’t. For a while. But eventually he struck me down and this statue along with it,” Rey answered. “But I found...oh wait,”

“Yes?”

“Follow me outside,” She said. 

Luke struggled to get up, uncertain whether he should follow her. As she cracked the door and walked out of his hut, she let more of the light in. He decided to join her.

Rey crouched down into the dirt and picked up her lightsaber. 

“I found this in the ruins of the statue,” She said. “This lightsaber?”

Luke looked at it—the way it fit so perfectly into her hand. This saber was Luke’s first saber, one he had used long before he made his own. It didn’t fit in his hand nearly as naturally as it did to her. 

It belonged to her.

“Yes, yes that is a lightsaber. A fine one indeed,” He’d keep its past secret from her. “The lightsaber was the weapon of a Jedi. They used the light of the Force to guide them through constructing it. Each saber was unique to its master.” 

As she hooked the saber back onto her belt, Rey looked at the mark on her hand. She remembered how it stung at the sound of the word Jedi before, but hadn’t in a long time.

“What does this mean?” She held up her hand. “Does it have something to do with the Jedi?”

“Remarkable…” His eyes locked on the mark, he had never seen anything like it before. It was the symbol of the Jedi—an icon he inherited from a thousand generations ago. In his exploration of Jedi lore and artifacts, he found the symbol on all sorts of things: books, temples, ships, even a few lightsabers. But he never, never, never saw it burned into the flesh of a Jedi—not in any paintings or historical texts. “Yes, that would be the symbol of the Jedi.”

Luke grabbed a stick off the ground and crouched down into the dirt. He made a few marks in the dirt—identical to those Rey made on the door. He also made another symbol—one Rey hadn’t seen before. It looked to be a diamond, only two pieces were cut out from either side. A circle surrounded the whole thing, almost like it tried to restrain the centerpiece of the design. 

“The mark of the Jedi,” He said as he pointed to the familiar mark. “And this is the mark of the Sith.”

“The Sith?” She had never heard of that term before. 

“The Sith were everything the Jedi were not,” He started. A look of anger and disgust took over his face. His eyes were tainted with hatred. “They were selfish and greedy. They used the Force to control people, to cause pain. They revelled in suffering, they had a thirst for violence.”

“What happened to them?”

“The Sith created the Empire, which terrorized the galaxy for a generation. But in due time, the forces of good overcame the Sith…” Luke’s thoughts fixated on his nephew. Did he really ever defeat the Sith? The darkness still existed. Or maybe the darkness was bigger than the Sith. 

“If the Force is the connection between life, how did the Sith get power?”

“They twisted the Force, they used their power for darkness. There exists, a dark side of the Force. It responds to negative emotions, it flows from anger and hate. Sadness and loss. Fear drives all these things.”

Rey finally realized what that cold feeling was aboard the ship—she felt the dark side churning within her soul. 

That had to be why Luke killed Ben.

“The darkness, you sensed that in Ben?” Rey asked. “The anger, the rage. The violent aggression. That was the darkness. You saw the darkness in him?”

Luke’s face grew pale; the hatred sank away from his eyes, replaced with remorse. 

“In his training, in his sleep. In everything he did I saw something off about him. In his eyes, there was something twisted behind them. I couldn’t quite figure it out. Or maybe I wanted to lie to myself…”

“So you murdered him?” Rey clenched her fists together and felt her blood pressure begin to rise. “You murdered him without saying a single word?”

“It’s not that simple! You, you wouldn’t understand…”

“Why? Why wouldn’t I understand?”

“There were things I saw, thoughts in his mind. I saw visions of him killing his father, I saw visions of him destroying everything I loved. Horrible, horrible things. A new era of suffering brought upon the galaxy.”

“You were scared of him, yes?”

“I...yes I was,” Luke said. The realization finally hit him. “I was scared of him.”

“And his mother was scared of him?”

“She was, yes.”

“So in killing him you gave into fear? Fear about what could happen?”

“So you gave into the dark side!” Rey stared down Skywalker, pointing her unlit saber at him. 

“Yes…” Shame painted his words.

“You became the very thing you hated!”

Luke’s face sank deeper, his eyes welled up—for he had never thought about it from that perspective before. He didn’t just make himself suffer, he made his sister suffer.

“What about his parents? His mother never knew the truth,” To Rey, this was the biggest sin. “Don’t you think this eats at her? You’ve been lying to her.”

“What good would the truth do? She’d know me for what I am—a murderer. It’s better for her that I’m just a ghost.”

“You don’t know until you say something,” Rey said. “It’s just like with Ben. You think you possess all the answers, but you don’t! You can’t see the future, you don’t know how people will react.”

“Do you think I’m glad I did what I did? I hated it!” The tears became bigger. “But I thought I was doing the best I could, I thought I was helping people. That’s what I’ve tried to do my whole life.”

“And in helping people you missed out the need in front of your nose!” Rey thought to her own childhood—how much she yearned to have an adult to guide her and love her. It became more apparent that simply love may not always be enough. If fear still rules the heart, then the love will diminish into nothingness. 

Rey had been scared of lots of things before—but nothing as much as never seeing her parents again. She knew now that she didn’t need to be scared about that, for her parents would always be with her. She knew they loved her and she knew they did everything they could to protect her. Could Ben’s family say that about him? 

She knew she had nothing to be scared of anymore. The Man in Black was nothing compared to her. 

“You could have said something. You could have reached out with an open palm, instead of a fist gripped around a weapon. You could have tried to figure out the cause of the anger, instead of just cutting it off. ”

“This debate is meaningless,” He barked. “A truth, a lie—what difference does it make. You said it yourself, there’s something evil where my nephew once was. That’s not him now. I broke my own family but the evil still lives on.”

“You created the evil,” Rey said. “If you didn’t kill him, the suffering wouldn’t have occurred. He’s hurting, he’s fearful. I’ve sensed it in him. There’s fear where something else should be in his heart.”

“And what can I do with all of this?” He asked. The moon began to rise once more on the island. “He’s dead. There’s no coming back.”

“No one’s ever really gone,” Rey said. She thought of her own tastes of death. Each time, she managed to escape the grip of demise—whether it came at the hands of the sea or of the Man in Black. Most of all, she thought of her parents—her mother in particular. She didn’t know her, but she knew the love her mother showed on the night she died would live on in her own heart forever. 

Rey saw the moonlight reflecting on the sea. She knew she had to go back to the castle, go to the spire, and confront Ben. She couldn’t kill Skywalker, she couldn’t kill Ben. There would be no more killing—death caused all the pain, violence is just the expression of continued fear. 

Before Skywalker could respond, Rey walked away from the village. Porgy followed her to the beach where Rey bent down to his level. 

“Porgy, I’m going to leave one final time,” She looked over to the castle and saw how beautiful it looked at night. “But then I will return. You don’t need to watch the man anymore, I know what I have to do.”

Approaching the ocean, Rey focused her thoughts on the sea beneath her. She dove into the waters, embracing the currents of the sea. Rey reached the castle in no time.

_ Skywalker picked himself up from the dirt and walked over to the cliffside. Standing at the edge, he saw the girl walk across the water. The girl, who pulled all of his emotions out in one fell swoop, was gone again. She was off to confront his nephew—to stop the pain he had caused. Soon the castle would fall and the cloud of darkness would be lifted from their hearts. But this could only happen if fear went away. _

_ She had no fear. The same couldn’t be said of him. _

_ He knew what he had to do.  _


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning to the castle, Rey makes her preparations for her confrontation with the Man in Black

Rey swam across the water, reaching the castle. She did not need to break a window and climb up. She swam down to the hole where she freed the Beast. Climbing back up the stairs and through the sealed door—Rey found herself back in the main, labyrinthian structure of the castle.

Only had something had changed.

Every passageway was cleaned.

The debris of the fights, the broken statues, the scars on the walls—everything that Rey and Ben did had been undone. It was like the castle had been reset. 

“That would mean…” Rey started. She darted through the castle to her old bedroom—thinking perhaps the barriers blocking it were gone. Sure enough, they were.

The room was just as she left it that night—it was the only room of the castle to not be made as it was. The bed was a mess; it had been turned over and tossed around by the den of snakes that took up residence in it. The mattress had been knocked off the frame; the whole frame was askew. The drawers had been spilled. The beautiful wood floor were scratched up, with boards ripped out of their place.

Rey began taking in the situation. She had stored a few things in the room when she first got here, but nothing she needed anymore. 

Nothing except one thing.

“My boots!” She said as she squatted down to pick them up from under the bed. “They’re still here.” All of her exploring and traversing with bare feet calloused and beat them into a stronger state. At this point, she barely noticed being bootless. But still, she was glad to not be walking around unprotected anymore. With her lightsaber in hand and boots on her feet, Rey felt both old and new. 

She walked to the closet and opened it again. Her robe that she made in this room was incredibly tattered and torn at this point—for sheets are not clothing. She thought about wearing her old clothes, which she brought with her from the desert, but they didn’t feel right for her anymore. When she first looked into the closet, all she found were ornate gowns with elaborate designs on them—the complete antithesis of Rey. 

Rey dug deeper into the closet, scattering the gowns across the floor. At the back of the closet she found something more plain, a basic white gown. It wasn’t anything remarkable, though it was of tremendous quality. The gown was softer than anything Rey had felt before—it felt like the clouds. But it was tough and strong; nothing could tear the gown apart. Rey knew this was what she thought. She discarred her old robe and put on this new gown. 

Rey sat on the floor, looking again at the room. She thought about putting the room back together again—fixing to just how it was when she found, back before the snakes attacked. 

“No, no,” She said. “It’ll always be in the room. I can’t just go back to how things were before, just change things to try and hide what happened.” She looked up to the ceiling of the room. “Besides, I need to find my way to the spire.”

She knew once she arrived to the spire, she’d have her final confrontation with the spirit that called her here. Just as with Luke, she wouldn’t kill the spirit—she couldn’t kill the spirit. But she knew the spirit would grow angry, she knew the Man in Black would attack her when he learns she did not give him the revenge he sought. 

“There has to be another way,” She thought. She wouldn’t continue the cycle of violence which had dominated both of their lives. 

But before any of these decisions could be made, Rey had to figure out how to get into the spire of the castle.

She saw it from the beach both times she entered the castle. It stood beautifully erect, so tall it looked as if it penetrated the low-lying clouds. It existed in the middle of the castle—perfectly round, wide enough to fit a ship in. Rey couldn’t see the tip of the spire—but she assumed it was round. 

“That’s where his chambers are,” Rey said, looking back on her memories of the spire. “That must be where I have seen him. With those visions…” 

She thought of the two times they had been forced together, she had seen him in some sort of large room. It was circular and arched up like a dome. A lone throne was the only item in the room—a throne which she always saw him sitting on. Above the throne was a skylight, a tiny slit in the roof that brought in a bit of the sky. Rey assumed that signaled to him when the moon was out and it was safe for him to wander. 

But she didn’t know where to find the spire. 

“I’ll just explore again,” Rey said. “It’s not like I’m short on time.” 

Rey grabbed her bag—one of her few links to her old life on Jakku—and left the bedroom for the last time. She didn’t collect any of her things she left in there. She had gone without these possessions for this long, she must not need them anymore. 

The bag still had a use, though. She’d go back to all the various libraries of the castle and see if any of the rooms had a book detailing the history of the castle. 

She walked out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Night began to settle on the land. The moon continued to rise outside. Darkness had enveloped the hallway.

Then, light interrupted.

A bright blue glow permeated out—illuminating the whole area. It was the same glow that Rey’s hand had shone in the past.

“But my hand,” She looked at her left hand. It was completely normal. “There’s nothing there?” She turned around—the light moved. She turned again and the light moved again. However she moved, the light moved in the opposite direction. They were opposites and linked.

“Wait!” Rey said, as she turned around a third time. She pulled her bag off and dug around. There wasn’t much left in the bag, but there was one thing—the centerpiece of the window she shattered to enter the castle for the first time. 

It shined brighter than Rey’s hand ever did. The black edges tried to restrict the light, but the white center let it radiate freely. 

“Why is it doing this?” Her eyes fixated on the dot in the middle—the light of the shattered glass touched her soul. It yearned for wholeness, it yearned to be made complete again. Rey was the only person who could fix the window. 

The light from the piece guided Rey through the darkened corridors. Her own mark began to glow; it gave more light in the darkness. The two whole windows were even more beautiful under the mixture of the lights and the dark. 

As Rey started at them, she realized who they were depicting all along—Ben’s parents.

“Leia, that’s her,” She looked up at the woman who gave her such a feeling of strength when she first arrived in the castle. But the fear Rey sensed remained, yet it had diminished to the point of nearing nothingness. 

“So the broken and empty one, the one in the middle,” She approached the spot where she first entered the castle. “This must have been...Ben.”

The hole remained, for the other pieces of the mirror were so small they had blown away in the wind. They were scattered throughout the sea—never to be recovered.

But the piece continued to glow, it continued to reach out to Rey—it wanted to be made whole again. It wanted to return to where it belonged. Rey lifted up the piece and, with the Force, she centered it in the middle of the hole—where it belonged. 

Suddenly, a powerful wind blew in from the sea. A powerful surge of water broke through the castle, flooding the interior. All of the rooms became flooded at once. The candles were all put out, books and furniture floated aimlessly throughout the corridors. The wall of water surrounded the castle. Rey could feel the soil beneath reaching a point of saturation where it began to sink back into the sea.

The whole castle would be submerged.

The flood knocked Rey to the opposite end of the castle, but she swam back to the windows. The center window had become whole again. 

“The water brought in the missing pieces,” She thought. “It’s whole again…”

She looked at the depiction of the figure—though the water obstructed much of it. The figure was dressed in pure white with a black vest, much like his father. Like his mother he had long hair, those his hang loose and free. But Rey couldn’t see the face of Ben. She couldn’t see his eyes. 

With a fluid movement of her hand, trying to keep motion in the water to resist the current of the flood, she approached the window. She stretched out her fingertips to reach out to the window. 

The moment her fingertips grazed the window, the light went out.

Rey looked around. She was surrounded by darkness—there was no light in this space. Standing up, she walked around to try and find something. Anything. For the Force was cold here. She couldn’t feel any warmth, she couldn’t feel any life. 

“This place, I haven’t been here before,” She said. “No, never. I’ve never felt this cold before.” 

She felt the floor—it was cold and damn, but porous. It was made of stone. Just like the rest of the castle.

“So I’m still in the castle, somewhere,” She observed her surroundings with her hands—trying to learn more about this place. Her left hand did not like what it felt.

“My blade, my saber!” She exclaimed. Her belt was incomplete. “Where is it?” She feared for the worst—that it had been lost in the flood. She closed her eyes and reached out to try and find her saber. Searching with the Force proved nearly impossible due to the lack of life. 

But in the distance, far from where she was, she sensed a blip of life. A tiny speck existed in some far off, yet approachable, land. And with the life she felt her saber. As Rey walked, it grew stronger within her heart. The power of life provided broke the total darkness Rey found herself in. 

She grew closer to the life. The darkness began to fade away. There were obstacles—trick stairs, blockages, traps—but through the Force these hazards were nothing. She easily overcame anything which laid before her. Even without sight, Rey possessed remarkable vision. 

The last obstacle before her was a ladder—a ladder where she couldn’t see what was in front of her. In gripping the sides, she could feel how heavy and tall the ladder was; it had at least a thousand rungs on it.  But she’d have to climb it, the light of life existed above the ladder—higher than Rey had ever been in the castle before.

It must be the spire. 

It must be him.

With the strength of a dozen people, Rey rapidly climbed up the ladder. She pulled herself up through the narrow shaft the ladder stood in. She had no thoughts in her head with only determination driving her to continue on her journey. Her final confrontation with the Man in Black, with Ben, approached her. 

Arriving at the top of the ladder, Rey saw a room—a well-lit room. She entered it and searched for anyone or anything, some life. Something drew her up here, but she couldn’t find it. 

But she did find her saber lying in the center of the room—beneath a skylight. She reached out and grabbed the blade with the Force, flinging it through the air and back into her hand. 

“Where is he?” She asked—anticipating to find the Man in Black here. It appeared in the time of the flood and the trek up to spire, a new day had come and gone. The sun began to set. The light faded away from the skylight, burning the atmosphere into a bright red haze. Darkness quickly sunk into the room.

She walked to leave the room, but a stone slabbed sealed the entrance shut right as she approached it.

“Hello Rey.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and the Man in Black begin their ultimate confrontation

Rey turned around and ignited her lightsaber to give a speck of light to the dark chamber. On the other side of the room, she saw a red glow shining in the darkness. 

Rey took twelve paces; the figure took twelve. She took thirteen; the figure mirrored her again. She fourteen paces, but this time he only took thirteen.

“You have returned to my castle,” He said—his voice had changed, it sounded like death. Just like when she first met the ghost. “But yet, you failed me. You failed to get justice for my death. Why must you continue to resist me?”

“Violence isn’t right.” She stood firm despite the him closing in on her—like an animal stalking its prey. If either of them made the slightest movement, they’d touch the other one. 

“How very Jedi of you,” He answered. Rey looked over him. The red glow of his lightsaber radiating off his black robes looked very intimidating. It was just like the snake. “But like any good Jedi, you’re a hypocrite!”

The Man in Black snapped his fingers which lowered the walls of the spire’s chamber. Only the skeleton of the structure remained. “Look outside Rey, tell me what you see?”

Rey walked away from him to look out onto the sea. The ocean had engulfed the entire castle—the water came up right below the shaft of the spire. A large rainstorm settled on the sea, dumping water at a rapid pace. 

“The ocean is rising.”

Good, good,” He said. Though he tried to speak in a sinister voice, he lacked all confidence.. “Now look beyond the castle, look to the island.”

Rey turned her eyes to the land. She saw the waves crashing onto the sea with limitless energy. The sandy beach she first washed up on had been reclaimed by the sea, the water began breaking onto the lower areas of the island. Valleys would soon be flooded—with no sign of the water stopping. The grand storm clouds moved quickly to the island. 

“The island…” The whole planet would be submerged soon. All the mountains, all the trees, all the animals would be destroyed by what gave them life. “No!”

The Man in Black teleported behind Rey, his saber right by her leg. 

“Oh yes,” He replied. “And do you know what has caused this great flood?”

Deep in her heart, Rey knew the answer. But she didn’t want to accept it.

“Say it Rey, you’re a smart girl.”

“I...I did it.”

“Exactly!” He screamed with a voice so loud the floor began to shake. “You did it!” His voice became increasingly manic and strained, like he was forcing himself to say these words. “Oh you were so proud—I could see it in your eyes—you were so proud of being able to control the storms and the seas and the sun.”

He walked over to the middle of the room and summoned his throne from the ground. 

“Pride,” He said as he sat on his throne. He slumped down in the chair, propping his legs up on the armrests. “The Jedi have always been full of it! Let me guess, Luke gave you some speech about how the Jedi are these peaceful people and us who use the dark are a scourge to the Force?” 

Rey didn’t know how to respond. She caused this flood—the entire planet would suffer because of her. Yet, her heart couldn’t focus on this future suffering. Something in the Man’s voice sounded different: his manner of speaking, his words, the emotions. It was all wrong. 

“What...how did I cause this?”

“Hmmph,” He scoffed from his throne. “Dwelling on failures? Just like Skywalker.”

He turned his head and looked straight at Rey’s eyes—peering straight into her soul. With his mask reformed, Rey couldn’t reciprocate. 

“Everything in the Force has a reaction,” He said. “It’s all connected. You said it yourself, no?”

“Yes,” She tentatively answered. The reality of the flood dried up her confidence. “It’s all connected.” 

“And when you started messing with the forces of nature, surely you’d know they’d strike back? Surely you knew they wouldn’t take too kindly to someone manipulating them?”

“Yes,”

“And you knew that one day they would strike back with all their might and strength!” He stood perfectly erect out of the chair. His saber raised in hand—anger welling in his words. 

With his unarmed hand, the Man in Black shot a bolt of lightning out of his fingertips—aimed directly at Rey. Immediately, she took up her blade and absorbed the lightning. 

“You’ll see what that might and strength looks like, Rey,” He barked.

He shot lightning out of his hand again. Rey rolled to dodge it, barely avoiding falling out the still-open walls. 

“Hmmmph,” He grunted. Rey stood up and looked him head on. With her unarmed hand, she pushed him to the opposite side of the room. The instinct of defense overrode her fear and shame at the face of the flood.

“You want to see lightning?” She asked. Rey raised her hand, pointed her first two fingers to the sky, and twisted her wrist. In an instant, a tremendous bolt of lightning—far larger than any ever to strike on Ahch-To—hit the skylight of the spire. The glass shattered everywhere; rain began falling inside the chamber.

“No!” He screamed. With great haste, he lifted the pieces of glass to reform the skylight—but he failed. All the pieces fell back to the ground. 

“Dwelling on failures?” Rey snidely said. “Just like Skywalker.”

“Don’t you dare compare to that monster,” He responded. Throwing caution to the wind, the Man in Black ran underneath the shower. The few drops of rain that fell on him appeared to burn away at his robe. 

“Huyyyyyyyyaaah!” With the force of a bull, he thrashed his blade at Rey. She ducked underneath his first attack, repelled his second with her blade, and rolled over to the opposite end of the room. 

Pointing out of the other side, Rey directed another bolt—just as large as the first—to strike the tower. This one struck the base of the tower, setting it on fire. Despite the rainfall, the fire continued to grow. It quickly made its way up the shaft of the tower and ignited the skeleton of the walls. In time, the whole chamber was ablaze—the surrounding cold darkness broken by the heat of the fire. 

Rey and the Man in Black stared at each other from opposite ends of the room for several moments; each one catching their breath and plotting their next move. Though they struck with strength and confidence, it seemed as both were holding back.

The two circled the permitted of the chamber, chasing each other but never making any ground. Their light walk picked up to a jog which turned into a run and later a full sprint. Their speed kicked up dust and created a trailing cloud. 

Round and round and round they continued to go, with neither getting closer to the other. A heavy, dense fog grew in the chamber—where the fire met the water. In a flash, the two darted towards the center with only the tower of rain separating them. Through the rain they began clashing their blades together—immediately evaporating the water. 

“You still haven’t learned! Your power could have been limitless!” He screamed. “Our combined power!” He continued to wail on her blade. “You could have done whatever you wanted, all you needed to do was help me!”

“Help you?” Rey answered as she responded with fierce blows of her own. “How would killing Skywalker have helped you? It wouldn’t have brought you back.”

He pushed further with his blade, the heat passed throguh the water and onto Rey’s skin. She began to sweat profusely—resisting the urge to give into his strength.

“No, but I would have had peace.”

“Peace? No, you would have found more suffering.” With all her strength, Rey pushed against his place. She forced it out of her face. With one fluid movement, Rey slid away from the center. 

“You don’t want to do this Ben, you don’t want to fight me!” She said. “And I don’t want to fight you. Violence caused all of this. You had all this time to sit here and think, you had all these books. All this knowledge…” 

The Man stood silent, not even noticing the water burning away on his right arm. 

The rain poured away on Rey’s saturated head—wetting her hair and making her dress heavy. 

“You had a family, you had parents who loved you,” Tears streamed down her face. “He was wrong to take these things away from you. But that doesn’t mean you need to continue the violence!” 

“Love?” He said. “What do you know of love! They sent me away to live with a man not ready. They sent me to travel the galaxy with a cult of old men. They turned me into this mess. When I get out of here, when I kill Skywalker, I will then get my revenge on them…” The red on his mask began to heat up and inflame a deep red. He raised his saber to an offensive stance and charged at Rey. “It all begins with you!” 

Rey took a defense stance and reflected his blows. He tried to find a weakness, tried to get her to relent—but he couldn’t. Her skills with a saber had grown exponentially since they last fought. She would not let his lust for revenge consume a whole galaxy. 

“And it ends with you,” She answered. Inverting her arm, she knocked the Man in Black out of his attack and knocked him to the ground. 

He laid on the ground—defeated once more at her hand. Rey’s saber was right at his chest. She could end all of this right here and then move her attention to stopping the floods—which creeped further and further up the islands. 

But she couldn’t.

Rey turned her saber off and put it on her belt. She sat cross-legged, closed her eyes, and began to contemplate the flood—completely ignore her combatant. She searched for the source of the flood, but as she went deeper and deeper into the Force she only found more questions. 

“You compassionate fool,” He moaned as he forced himself up. Gingerly, he walked towards Rey. Raising his blade, he struck down on her as she meditated.

Rey caught his blade with her left hand—the hand with the mark—and stood up. Her brown eyes turned bright blue as the eyes of his mask turned bright red. With her free hand she grabbed her own saber and ignited it once more. 

The Man in Black jerked his saber back, freeing it from his grasp. There was strength in her combat, a strength he had never felt before. 

He liked it.

“You still haven’t learned, there’s nothing stronger than love!” She exclaimed as their sabers clashed once more. “You want to know love? A mother who gives her life for a daughter.”

“Death?” He said. “What does death mean? Nothing to people like us! People with unlimited power!” He grinded his saber across her blade, trying to push it closer to her. “Look at me Rey, what has death done to me?”

“Everything,” She whispered, pushing against his blade. The red and the blue continued to parry and block each other—moving together in a unique harmony. The center of the room separated them again. 

“Your skills with a saber have grown,” He said, raising his head to look at the rainfall in the middle. He then looked at the floors—which were not stone in the chamber, but a sheet of metal. “Let’s test the rest of your abilities.” 

From his fingers, he shot lightning towards the rainfall—refracting it in every direction, shocking the whole floor. 

“Aaaghhhh,” The charge ran up the floor and through Rey’s body. The coat of water provided a vessel for the current to travel. Her heartbeat became erratic, her breath grew irregular.

Focusing as best she could, Rey raised her left hand and grabbed the side of the skeleton. She slumped to the ground, weakened, but the charge ran out of her body and went through the water on the rock’s surface.

Gripping the side of the wall, she watched the Man in Black pace around the room. With her right hand, Rey turned over her lightsaber—cloaking herself in the mixture of the fog and darkness. As she clung to to the edge of the building, the Man in Black couldn’t see her. 

But she could see him.

He paced around the still-electrified floor, searching for her. He thrashed his lightsaber around at the floor; pieces of metal shot off in every direction. The spire began to shake. 

“I won’t!” He screamed. “I won’t!”

Something was different about him. His normal demeanor was gone; he showed all the rage his parents and Luke talked about. He stuck his saber into the floor—standing perfectly erect and stationary. He brought his arms to his chest in a twisting motion; his limbs began to tremble. 

“I can’t, I won’t, I...I….” He started. “NO!” He screamed, releasing his arms. A shockwave rippled through the air, dissipating the fog. It took all of Rey’s strength for her to maintain her grip to the wall and not fall into the sea below. 

The fire continued to climb up the shaft; pieces of stone began to fall out of the supports and into the rising waters. The tremors became more frequent, the waves in the ocean grew more violent. The winds carried salt from the water into the chamber. The entire world became more unstable.

Rey forced herself up, still weakened by the power of the shock, and ignited her saber. 

The Man in Black took his saber out of the ground. His limbs continued to tremble, his head started twitching. 

Despite his condition, Rey knew in this weakened state she would not last against him. The shock of the floor could come again—she doubted she possessed the strength to continue to resist it. Their confrontation could not continue on his terms.

Looking out of the corner of her eye, Rey saw larger chunks of stone falling into the rising water. These pieces looked large enough to stand on; steady enough one could float on the sea with enough focus and balance. 

With a wave to the Man in Black, Rey backflipped out of the spire and onto the sea below. She did not know where she would fall—for the winds were too strong—but she had faith in landing on one of the pieces. 

The Man sprinted to the other end. He did not even notice he ran straight through the water, which burned away at his hood and mask. Frantically, he looked down to see where she landed.

“Where are you?” He breathed out. The waters were deep—it was far too much of a risk for him to jump down. “Whatever.” He knew if she did not return, the planet would fall and Skywalker would perish—freeing him from the castle. He could seek revenge without having to harm her. Her great flood would liberate him after all. 

However, he couldn’t bear the thought of her escaping him, for she angered him with her defiance. He couldn’t accept her succumbing to the flood, for she confused him with her persistence. 

“But I must,” He said. “It’s the only way…”

The fire raged on. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey climbs her way back up to the tower to finish her confrontation with the Man in Black—as she receives aid from friends.

From the sea, Rey floated aimlessly around the castle. The entire castle had been submerged. A great shaft of light from the fire came out of the water—heating the surrounding air, creating a cloud of steam on the waters. 

“Ooaah, ooaah” Rey sat on a rock, breathing heavily. She tried to regain her strength following the shock of his lightning. 

Floating on the sea gave her a new perspective. The vastness of the overflowing ocean reminded Rey of just how small she and Ben were compared to the planet. Even Ahch-To was tiny compared to the galaxy; to the wider universe. They were merely two specks in the celestial dance of everything.

And yet, these two specks were brought together. They fought this battle through the Force. The forces of nature bent to their wills, yet their wills bent to the forces of nature. 

“It really is all connected,” Rey said as she continued to watch the fire rage on his tower. 

She took in a deep breath and thought about her next course of action. She’d need to find a way to break through the fire and get back into the chamber. Then she’d need a way of surviving the floor. Lastly, she’d need to beat the Man in Black.

Or Ben.

Or whoever he was.

The waters continued to rise on the island—lower mountains became surrounded by water. The rains kept on falling without an end in sight. Soon the whole planet would be covered by water.

And yet, the tower continued to burn. 

Sitting on her makeshift float, Rey stuck her hand in the water. She wanted to see if she could break the flood; to slow down the waves. As she dug through the water in the Force, it kept going deeper and deeper and deeper. Still, she could not find the source of the flood; she could not get to the root of the problem. But through the water, she did find something.

Snakes.

Lot of them.

Legions upon legions of snakes—all red and black—erupted from the sea. They were so dark it looked as if there were nothing but floating red eyes. 

“Ahhh!” Rey screamed as she began hacking away at the snakes. With thrusts and slashes, the snakes fell back into the sea. It was just like before; as one snake fell, two more came up. Rey couldn’t keep pace. 

They began slithering onto her float, nibbling away at her boots. They climbed up her body. She shook some off, but they were persistent. 

“Ow!” One snake bit her on her neck—the one who she couldn’t shake off. 

The snakes grew in count. More and more came to her floating rock, trying to push her into the sea. The weight of the snakes started to encumber the rock, bringing in into the sea.

“No...” Rey saw the water overtaking her, rising up to her calves. “

“Bwwwooaaa, bwoooaa!” A wind opposite of the storm came—the snakes were blown off her float and into the sea. The snakes that continued to rain out of the sea struggled to break out of the water. 

“What is...” Rey asked. She realized her eyes did not deceive her. “No way!”

Porgs, at least a thousand of them, came to her. The birds came down from the sky and started attacking all of the snakes. The snakes couldn’t keep up; they couldn’t attack Rey.

As her float cleared off, a familiar porg landed on Rey’s back.

“Bwwok!” Rey turned her head around and picked the bird up.

“Porgy!” She said, as she held the bird in her arms. “How did you know I was here?”

“Bwweeek, bwwwaa,” The birds had to flee the floods. The forests they called home were submerged. They would have drowned if they stayed behind. As they flew to find higher ground, Porgy spotted the burning spire and knew she’d be in danger. He encouraged his flock to help the girl out, for she saved his life back when she first landed on the island. 

“Thank you Porgy,” She said as she gave the bird a big hug. “I’ll never forget you, I will make the floods go away. I will get your home back.” 

The bird squeaked in adoration as he flew away, rejoining his kind the clouds. Wherever they flew, the rains avoided them. As the birds left, the waters settled a bit.

Pushing her float forward with her unlit lightsaber, Rey approached the spire. With her strength returned—the bite of the snake left no lasting damage—she knew she had to get back into the battle and face the Man in Black. She’d need to end this, somehow, once and for all. 

“But how can I get up there?” Every side, every angle of the spire was covered in flames. Block by block, the supports and walls began to fall out and melt under the heat. Liquid rock flowed out of the side of the shaft and into the sea below. 

Climbing was out of the question. She couldn’t jump high enough to reach the chamber—at least, not without risking falling into the ocean. Swimming through the castle and up the shaft would be too dangerous as she didn’t know what was in the water. 

“There has to be some way to get back in,” She said, squinting her eyes as she stared right at the shaft. “Has to…”

She turned behind her and saw the sea begin to sink and begin to rotate. The pressure dropped—rapidly—and pulled Rey’s rock into it.

“Woah!” She jumped to another rock—safe enough from the pull of the growing vortexes. 

Emerging from the rotationin the back were twelve creatures—each identical, yet different from the others. Through the darkness, Rey couldn’t see who or what they were. 

From the vortex in the front, a familiar head emerged.

“The Beast?” Rey said. “How are you here? Why are you here?”

A large volume of water came out its nostrils; its eyes opening to get a good look at Rey.

“Friend!” It said. “It is good to see a friend.” The Beast used its tail to point at the creatures behind it. “I have made more friends, they are my family.”

Her eyes became illuminated. The twelve looked just like the Beast. It had founds its own people. 

“There were others like you out there,” She said. “You found…”

“Family!” The Beast said. “You taught me that word.” 

“How did you find them?”

“I swam through the sea. I loved the daylight, it was so warm and inviting. I eventually swam to the bottom of the sea, because I wanted to know what was there. I found a deep cave. I was scared to go in but I remember what you told me about fear. Things may get worse, they may get better. But I’ll never know until I dive into that cave.”

Rey’s own words simmered on her mind.

“I found creatures like me there,” It said. “They swam like me, looked like me, were as big as me…I felt…”

The Beast sat silent for a moment as the rain poured on its gigantic body. The shadow of its head produced a bit of a shadow, blocking Rey from the water.

“I felt like I belonged, I...I climbed the mountain as you said” the Beast said. Turning its head over so slightly, the Beast asked Rey a question. “Did you ever climb the mountain?”

Rey didn’t know how to answer. In the past, she gave half-truths and false answers to her friend to comfort it. She didn’t want to stress the Beast out; she didn’t want to stray him from his path. 

But now, she wanted to be completely honest with the Beast. She didn’t want to hide anything anymore. 

“No, no I haven’t,” She started. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to get over the top of that mountain.”

“Hmmmph,” The Beast sighed. “I see…” 

The Beast lowered its lengthy neck down, bringing its head closer to Rey’s eyes. 

“You may remember, I just learned the concept of time when you first met me,” The Beast said. “The one who came before you taught me. He was obsessed with the past.”

He was talking about the Man in Black—about Ben.

“But you, when I look into your soul I see someone obsessed with the future,” The Beast’s large eyes peered straight into Rey. “Yet when I first met you, you were worried about the past...what changed?”

“I learned about the past, I guess,” Rey recognized the Beast had changed—it no longer sounded like a naive child, but a wise adult. “And I think learning made my fear go away…”

“But?”

“But it gave me the need to fix the past through the future,” She talked confidently to the Beast and to Skywalker—but deep down she was just as insecure and fearful as anyone. “And I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You got me out of that castle,” The Beast said. “If you can do that, you can do anything.”

The Beast looked up at the spire burning—with no way of getting back in. The Beast turned its head to its twelve companions and nodded.

“Friends help friends, just like you helped me” The Beast told Rey. “Get on my back and we will get you back into the spire.”

Rey obliged, trusting her friend with her life. 

“In the cave I found new power, I found strength that I had long forgotten.”

“What is it?”

The Beast closed its eyes and began to stretch at its sides. The other twelve did the same.

Two gigantic wings sprouted out of the side of all the beasts. They shook themselves dry; clearing all the rock and debris from their wings.

With the force of a ship entering hyperspace, the beasts flapped their wings. The water beneath them started breaking and rocking—opposite from the currents of the flood. Soon, the beasts were in the air. They didn’t move fast or with much grace, but they got the job done.

“But how are we going to get through the flames?” Rey asked. “They’d burn you.”

“Leave it to us,” The twelve in the back said. Encircling the spire, they fanned their wings to weaken the flames. In time, a hole grew in the perimeter of the spire’s chamber—giving Rey the perfect opportunity to get back into the battle. 

“Thank you, Beast,” She said. “Thank you for all the help.”

“Rey,” The Beast said. “It is you who should be thanked. You gave me new life.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“What does you heart tell you?”

Rey nodded her head and jumped off the Beast’s back, patting the Beast’s head as it department. 

The fog and smoke had cleared from the chamber thanks to the winds of the beasts—both the Man in Black and Rey had clear vision now.

“Rey,” He breathed out slowly. “You survived your fall? Hmm, very well.”

“Ben,” She breathed out slowly. “You know it doesn’t have to be this way. You know you don’t have to fight me.”

“I do,” He slowly spoke. Rey could tell in her absence he grew less stable. Emotions began overwhelming him. “It’s the only way.” He ignited his blade.

“It’s never the only way, you always have a choice,” She answered, igniting her own blade. “I won’t let you go down this path.”

“Huuuuyah!” In unison, the two screamed as they charged towards each other—facing their future head one. Their blades clashed in harmony; neither could get an advantage over the other. 

The entire chamber was on fire, the floor was thirteen times as hot as the warmest day on Jakku. It was a great big infero. Sweat poured out of Rey’s body.

Hours and hours passed. The rain continued to rage, the floodwaters continued to rise. The two continued to circle around the chamber, dancing the waltz of death. While Rey had the energy to continue going, the Man in Black had even more. The cover of the clouds, which blocked the sun, strengthened him. But where he was loud and manic before, he was silent now. Rey felt somberness cycling endlessly through him.

Their fight continued, uninterrupted. No matter what one did, the other would match. If one moved left, the other mirrored it. If one struck from the top, the other came from the bottom to block. It was perfectly balanced. 

“Ben, Ben!” She said—loud enough to break through the storm raging. “I can feel it within you, you don’t want to do this. You don’t have to do this! Just let go. Please, let go.”

“No, no, no,” He whispered. He raised his lightsaber and aggressively came at her from the side. “I can’t!” 

Rey ducked under the saber and rolled away from him. He came at her again—this time from the bottom—and she struck from the top. 

“There’s a boy in there, I know he’s still there,” She told him. “A boy who was angry, yes. But a boy with a heart! A boy who had people who loved him! And a boy who loved them. I can feel him, surely you can too?”

The Man in Black stood silent, continually thrashing at her. 

They moved towards the center of the room, dancing towards the water. With her saber, Rey lured the Man in Black to the rain. Spinning around the corner, she ducked and twirled and used any agile move she could think of to try and get him to fall into the water. She knew it burned him, she knew he was weak to it. 

She passed her saber through the water, getting him to poke his through to block it. In doing so, Rey pulled him through by grabbing his saber with her left hand. He avoided the bulk of the water—but his mask took a direct shot. Where it was repaired had been damaged beyond salvage.

His two eyes, those two dead and sad eyes, were naked for everyone to see. 

Rey couldn’t move away from those eyes—they were so big, so brown. They screamed out in pain to her with every movement. 

“Look at that world out there, look at the pain!” She said, pointing to the waters. “We can stop this, we can reverse the waters. You just need to stop.”

“I’ll never stop, I’ll never stop,” He barked. “You don’t understand pain, you don’t understand death!” 

“But I do,” A voice called from the rain falling from the skylight. 

Rey turned her head—shocked at what she saw.

The Man in Black dropped his blade—terrified at who was before him. 

Skywalker entered the castle.

“Ben,” He said. Rey could see from his belt that he came unarmed.

The Man in Black pushed Rey to the ground and faced down his former master.

“Why are you here?” He yelled. “Have you come to taunt me? To mock me? To say how right you were about my evil soul!”

“No,” Luke said.

“Ah, so you came to say you forgive me?” He screamed. “You came to say that you have saved my soul from darkness and have liberated me from the clutches of evil? In all that Jedi egotism your dead religion was known for.”

“No,” Luke said. 

“Then tell me,” He cried. “Tell me before I get my revenge why you came here!”

“I came here to tell you something…” Luke’s voice began to crack, tears rolled down his face. The sight of his nephew—even in this ghostly state—sent a wave of emotions through Luke’s heart. Rey could practically reach out and touch it through the Force.

“Out with it!” He pulled his saber out and held it to Skywalker’s neck. 

“Ben, I’m sorry.” Luke looked deep into his naked eyes. They looked just as they did when he held him in his arms after he was born. Han was so proud, Leia was so happy. 

The Man in Black was shocked. His blade trembled in hand, slowly lowering from Skywalker’s neck and moving towards his heart. 

“I was wrong, I was weak. I should have told you, I should have talked with you. I should’ve called your mother. There’s a thousand things I should have done instead of taking your life. We’ve all felt the pull of the darkness at one time or another...I wasn’t loving.”

He began to huff and puff. “You have the audacity to come here, to come into my domain and apologize to me?” His voice began to crack up. “I, I don’t need your apology.” He circled the chamber—flicking his saber on and off. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You unlocked my true potential, you showed me the monster that we really are. Our whole family...from Vader to you, and now to me. We’re all monsters.”

“You’re not a monster, Ben,” Luke said. “You’re a scared and frightened boy. I did something horrible to you. But you are not a monster, no one is a monster.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” He said, pointing his finger at Luke. His hand trembled rapidly. “That’s where you’re all wrong! We are all monsters, all of life. We are all selfish beings who only serve for our own survival. You killed me because you feared me. What does your Jedi training tell you about fear?”

“It says to resist it, it says to accept fear as a part of life!” Rey screamed. “To never let fear control you.”

The Man in Black turned his head away from Skywalker and towards Rey. A wave of anger, a pulse of unrestricted rage ran through him. His thoughts turned to nothing. His heart became silent.

“I’ll show you what a monster is, I’ll show you what you made me do,” He said to Luke. “This blood is on your hands.”

The Man in Black grabbed his saber and held Rey up by her neck. He looked into her eyes; she looked into his. Both knew what was about to happen—yet neither could do anything to stop it. 

She closed her eyes, accepting her fate—if she was going to go, it’d have to be like this. Luke stood in shock, catatonic at what he witnessed. The Man in Black’s hands continued to shake, his eyes shed a single tear.

It didn’t matter. The deed was done. With a stab to the heart leaving the mark of a star, Rey was dead. 

The last thing she saw were her murderer’s eyes—full of regret and shame. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben deals with the consequences of his actions in the tower

_ Rey emerged from toxic sludge of water, her clothes covered in muck and mud and slime before they dissolved into the water. _

_ The black and red snake shot over the water, passing over her head. It had already consumed the man—whose face Rey did not see—yet it had spared Rey. Or perhaps it was an accident, perhaps he had meant to swallow her too. _

_ Picking herself up out of the water, Rey noticed the water turned clear and clean. All the filth had been put on her bare body. Rey looked at the surrounding chaos and destruction. The whole pristine landscape had been ruined; all life has been sucked out from the forest. The world was barren and dead. All hope was gone. _

_ But in the distance, Rey saw a spark of hope—a flower. It wasn’t too large, no bigger than her hand, but she could clearly see the flower peeking out over the horizon. The flower neared death as the boiling heat dried it out. It barely clung to life.  _

_ Rey took a hollowed-out rock from the pond and filled it up with water. She walked slowly over to the flower—careful to be mindful of her surroundings in case the snake returned.  _

_ Squatting down, she poured water on the flower—giving it a second chance at life.  _

“What,” Ben cried, tears rolling from his face. “What...what I have done!” He stared down into the stormy seas below, watching helplessly as Rey’s body fell into the ocean. 

He looked at his still-shaking hands, soaked in the blood and soul of the life he just took. 

“No, no, no, no, no,” He slumped to the floor, clinging to the wall. He watched the waves in a foolish hope of movement; that she would emerge from the waters. “Noooooooooooo!”

Luke walked over to the edge and sat beside Ben, putting his arm around his nephew. 

“I, I did this…” He solmely said. “This is my fault, this is....”

Luke held him tighter. Luke hadn’t held him like this since he was a boy, confused about the strange things happening to him that the other kids didn’t have. 

“I’m a monster…” He mumbled through the tears. “I don’t, I can’t be trusted with this…” He grabbed his lightsaber and threw it deep into the ocean—never to be seen again. 

_ The flower blossomed, quickly returning to good health. It provided a speck of color in the endless sea of death surrounding Rey.  _

_ She wandered the wilderness, searching for more signs of life. When she first came to the forest, the sight of all the trees and animals amazed her. She felt like she was one with nature. Though life was gone, the feeling remained. Through the flower, she knew life could return to the forest—someone just had to work for it.  _

_ She continued to walk. She walked past the dried riverbeds, through the ruins of decaying trees, over the dead grass, on top of the dried and cracked soil. Time was nothing here. Before, it was forever day. As she emerged from the dirty waters and searched the land, an eternal night sunk upon the land. There was not even a moon to give light—it was pure darkness. Only emotion guided Rey through the night.  _

_ Over by a barren lake, Rey found a cave—a deep, damp cave. Rey could not feel through the Force here, but she felt called to enter the cave. It tempted her, luring her into its coldness.  _

_ The interior of the cave was freezing. Rey’s toes and fingers grew numb, she kept her movements slow to conserve her energy. In her nakedness, the power of the cold was exacerbated.  _

_ She passed through the cave’s rocky and uneven exterior. The stalagmites and stalactites locked her in a cage. The cave curved around, with no rhyme to its structure. As Rey went deeper and deeper into the cave, she feared she wouldn’t be able to find her way out.  _

_ She found herself in the center of the cave. It was a large, dome-like chamber. Sounds echoed and reverberated off of its walls—bouncing around in perpetuity. In the middle of the chamber was a large body of water; deeper than the deepest ocean. It looked as if it went all the way to the core of this world—wherever that was.  _

_ Rey entered the lake, washing off her filth. She jovially swam around in the lake—feeling like an innocent child. She knew not if this was death, if this was life—or maybe something in between. But whatever it was, she liked it.  _

_ The calm waters began to ripple, sounds began to dance around the chamber. Rey took her head out of the water to hear what caused the water to vibrate and sing.  _

_ “Rey!” A voice of a woman said. “Rey!”  _

_ She swam to the edge, getting out of the water and back into the cave. She looked around and saw nothing. _

_ “Rey!” She said. “Rey!” _

_ Rey turned around to her back; turning to the opposite side of the lake. On a ledge overlooking the water, she saw someone she thought she’d never see. _

_ She saw the face of her mother.  _

Ben kept on crying as the storm raged on outside. The fire continued to grow—overtaking more and more of the spire. Soon the shaft would completely give way and fall into the ocean. 

“Ben,” Luke hesitantly said. He felt it would have been best to keep silent—but knew sometimes an uncomfortable conversation is necessary. “What are you going to do now?”

He looked at the spire, burning away in the unstoppable fire. He looked at his castle, submerged in never-ending flood. He looked at his life, a dark cloud on the sunlight of her life. 

He turned his head to his uncle and removed his mask—revealing the rest of his gaunt and ghastly face. His face looked to be stuck between death and life; without rest and peace. 

“I know what I have to do,” He said. He stood up and stared into the deep blue below. He knew not whether he would be able to keep his weak grip on the mortal world. He did not know whether the water would consume him, whether it would burn him away. He did not know whether he would find what he needed to find. But he knew it would be immensely painful, he knew it would take all the energy left in him to make it through. 

And he knew he had to do to this.

With the wind catching and blowing his robe around, he jumped off the edge of the spire and into the raging waters below. 

_ “Mother?” Rey said. “Is it really...how are you….”  _

_ She was speechless.  _

_ Rey’s mother came down the edge, floated across the water, and approached her child. She looked like a splitting image of Rey—they had the same face, the same hair, the same eyes. She was as bare Rey was—with nothing to hide, nowhere to conceal.  _

_ “My child,” She said, bringing Rey in for a deep embrace. “It’s been a lifetime since I have seen you. I’m sorry...” _

_ “I was never alone,” Rey looked into her mother’s eyes—into her eyes. “I had you in my heart. _

_ Rey’s mother stood in silence, taking in the sight of her daughter. She last saw her as a newborn, the blank canvas of new life. Now she sees her again as an adult, joining her in the life beyond life.  _

_ But she knew this would only be temporary. She knew her daughter’s journey wasn’t complete yet. She still had a life to live, a story to write.  _

_ “Rey,” She asked. “Do you know where you are?” _

_ “I guess I’m dead,” Rey felt down her chest, expecting to find a hole where the wound would be. But she could find no such wound. _

_ She grabbed Rey’s hands, tightly gripping and raising them to their hearts. “But I can feel your heart beating, can you feel mine?” _

_ Rey listened. She could hear the water flow behind her, reverberating off the cave’s walls. She could hear drips from the ceiling. She heard winds whip outside, echoing throughout the cave. But she could hear no rhythms of life—for her or her mother.  _

_ “But I can’t hear anything?” Rey asked. “There’s nothing there.” _

_ “No not hear...feel,” She said. “With your heart.” _

_ Rey took a deep breath and focused on heart. If she couldn’t feel her heart, no one could. She blocked out the sights and sounds of the world, focusing only on herself.  _

_ “Your life ended before your time, just like mine,” Her mother said. “But you have a choice. Do you feel your heart? Or do you only hear the waters of the cave?” _

_ “I….” Rey tried to parse what her words meant.  _

_ “What’s kept me here is you. What keeps anyone who is gone is someone else. The love of another keeps the soul going and the heart alive even after we’ve gone on.” _

_ Rey sat down on the mud on the shoreline, getting her hands deep in the soil.  _

_ “Rey, does you heart have a reason to go on? Do you have anything left to feel?” _

_ Her thoughts turned to Ben, her killer. The broken soul who committed a wretched act. Yet Rey had no anger towards him. She did not desire vengeance. She merely wished to liberate his soul from the purgatory it was trapped him. She knew he suffered in this state, she yearned for him to find the peace in death that she had. _

_ Her heart began to beat once more. _

_ “Yes,” She replied. “There is.” _

_ “Then rise,” Her mother said. With a flick of her wrist, she pushed her daughter deep into the waters of the cave.  _

Ben plummeted into the water, swimming past his castle and through the floodwaters. He went deeper—into the original boundaries of the ocean. The water began to eat away at his clothes, turning them into nothing. His flesh was next. The burning sensation surrounded him. The pain was like nothing he had ever felt before—even dying wasn’t this bad. 

But he kept going. He knew the pain of not going would be a thousand times worse. Things may be better, they may be worse—but Ben would never know unless he did. 

_ Rey swam through the deep water, into the core, and out the other side. Wandering the landscape, she heard the sound of a sonic boom go off. Blasting by her was the snake. It landed on the dirt in front of her, coiling up and looking down at her—with death in its eyes.  _

_ Its head tried to pounce and dart on her. The snake tried to strike her; trying to swallow her just like the man. But each time Rey avoided it.  _

_ Rey held her left hand on her heart. She stared right into the eyes of the snake, then she closed her eyes.  _

_ “This ends right here,” She said. “This will begin to make things right.” _

_ Rey opened her eyes and pulled her own snake out of her heart. It was the exact same size as the red-and-black snake. Only her snake was blue-and-yellow. It did not have a lust for death in its eyes, but a love of life. It shed its skin not to find prey, but to keep the cycle of nature going. It sought not to destroy, but to build.  _

_ The twin snakes danced around each other; slithering and breaking through the air. They moved in harmony, with tremendous grace. The two stretched into the sky, each trying to cross the other up. _

_ Rey watched their duel occur—unable to help her snake in the fight. She stood in awe, feeling as if she was in the presence of forces far greater than her.  _

_ The snakes raged on—one topping the other, then switching, then back again. Back and forth they flowed in the sky. The snakes tried to bite each other, but could not hit. They danced through the night sky, gliding through the wind to the rhythms of nature. It was conflict; a fight for power. But despite this, Rey felt an immense peace. She felt one with the scene of nature unfolding in the sky above.  _

_ In the distance, a brush fire broke out. _

Ben kept going deeper into the ocean—the burning began to make deep marks on his soul. At these depths, it was impossible to see. Very little light from the burning spire penetrated through to these deep waters. The only guiding light for him was instinct and a desire—a desire to undo what had been done. 

The pressure of the sea squeezed him even tighter. He struggled to maintain his consciousness, maintain his identity in these deep waters. Trapped between death and life, his connection to either plane was held by the thinnest of threads. The sea could break his link.

Or it could make his bond stronger

_ The fire spread to underneath the snakes. The smoke rose into the sky, blocking Rey’s sight of the battle. She climbed hills and up on rocks to try and get a better view of the two. She went higher and higher and higher, but could never get high enough to see the snakes clearly. She went up on some unsteady rocks, but still could not see the snakes.  _

_ The fire came up the grass, engulfing the whole field. It chased Rey to the highest point of the cliffs. Avoiding the blaze, she ran to the edge of the cliff. She looked below the cliff and saw the field entirely on fire. Behind her was on fire. The hills on the other side of the ravine, too, were on fire.  _

_ Rey had no other option—she had to jump.  _

_ Leaping into the fires below, Rey caught a glimpse of the snakes. She saw the two no longer fighting, but coiled around each other. The two snakes had become one—two heads, two bodies, but one soul. Their heads pointed in opposite directions but they were linked at their ends, which spiraled into a shared end.  _

_ With her left hand, she reached out and grabbed the tail—pulling the snakes toward her heart and bringing them back inside her.  _

_ As they touched her chest, the fires went out below. In a great flash of light, the two snakes combined into a ball of light—breaking the darkness, illuminating the sky. The light danced around Rey; embracing and caressing her. The light tossed around her hair, flowed across her body.  _

_ She floated through the air as the light and her were in unison. The smoke faded, dissipating around them. The light formed a barrier to keep the smoke out. Coiling around her one final time, the light entered her—filling her with renewed life.  _

_ Falling to the ground, Rey saw the light exit from where it entered. It began to take the shape of a person. It was a man. The man from earlier—the man on the hill.  _

_ Rey knew what she had to do. _

_ She knew she had the strength to do it. _

_ She just needed to open up her eyes. _

_ And wake up. _

The remnants of Ben’s form began to burn away in the water—he’d soon disintegrate into nothing, becoming at one with the water. But he reached the floor of the sea He swam towards Rey’s body, using his last bit of strength. 

“Rey,” He said. “I was a fool, I was a monster. I gave into anger and fear and hate for far too many years. I let it control me, I let it turn me into a horrible creature. I took an innocent soul just as I was taken. I...I became my fear.”

He reached out his left hand, for it was the only one he had left. He wanted nothing more than to touch her, to feel a human after all these years before he became nothing. 

“I’m sorry…”

His hand faded away in the water, his heart merged with the ocean. The last part that remained—his eyes—became one with the sea. 

The Man in Black was no more.

Luke stood on the burning spire, staring into the sea where his nephew dove. He saw no sign of movement, no sign of life. Still, he felt a sense of peace—that his soul had finally found rest and liberation. 

“It still isn’t right,” He said. “Now two die young.”

But the girl’s words rang in his ear—‘No one’s ever really gone’. What could she have meant by that? In some way, did she know what was going to happen? Was she preparing for all along?

At once, the sea lit up a bright blue. The surrounding darkness faded away. The light of the water was far stronger, far brighter than that of the fire. 

A bolt of pure white light shot out of the blue ocean. It broke through the dark black clouds, fading away the clouds and stopping the rain. 

The great wind blew over the land, carrying the entire fire away from the spire. The fire hovered over the sea before wrapping around itself. It started rotating, eventually forming a ball—spinning away in perfect synchronization with Ahch-To. 

The entire floodwaters, from the ocean to the valleys to the islands to the mountains, rose from the planet. The waters rush to where the fireball spun. The water formed a different shape; they bent and rippled and folded over into what looked like a flower with a hole in the middle. Beyond the flower shape, a large ball of water grew.

The white light came down from the sky, pushing the ball to the flower and through the hole. Through the water, the fireball implanted itself within the waterball. An immense amount of steam came through.

Another arm emerged from the white light. The right arm summoned lightning from one corner of the planet, the left arm summoned from the opposite corner. The two bolts met in the middle—at the ball of water—and electrified it. Power ran through the water and into the fire, creating even more steam. 

A puff of steam shot out of the flower-hole and onto the beach opposite the spire. The white light travelled opposite the steam, arriving at the beach simulatenously it. 

The steamed faded with the winds of the sea and the brush of the sand. The clearing revealed a man. A man bare to the world—born anew, naked like any other baby. He had all the features of a man, yet had a clean soul—a soul with the sins of passed made right. 

It was the Man in Black.

The two hands belonging to the white light extended. They turned around and grabbed the light from itself, forming the light into a ball. As the light went, so did that which protected the being—it was now entirely bare to the world, just like the man in front of her. With the ball in hand, it shoved the orb into his bare chest—transforming his scar from that of the sith to that of the Jedi.

It was Ben.

The being grabbed his hand. Still blinded by the experience, he moved through feeling—reaching out and grabbing the hand, submitting to whatever force had saved him.

The touch of another gave him life. His eyes opened with life returning to his soul. He was a human again—he could feel the roughness of the sand, smell the scents of the trees, hear the sounds of the wind, taste the salt of the sea.

But most of all, he could see the face in front of him. He could see the face which liberated him from the bondage of pain, which raised him from the depths of the sea, which pulled from the clutches of death.

It was Rey.

“Rey?” He asked. “How are you…”

She pulled him by his hand, bringing him to her face as she sat in the sea. 

With her free hand, the left one—the one with the mark of the Jedi—she placed a finger on his mouth. She stared into his eyes—finding only goodness and love within his heart. 

They were normal human eyes.

They were happy eyes.

They were full of life.

She pulled him even closer; not even a wind could pass through the two of them. Together, they became like the snakes—free from destruction and fighting, from death and chaos. They found new life in each other. Together they found their home by the sea.

The sun broke out over the water, illuminating the promise of the new day. 

The horizon kissed the sea, reflecting onto the rocky shoreline the unity of the heavens and the earth. 

The ocean wind carried all the smells of the sea to the land, joining together the seas and the land. 

Paradise existed somewhere in the galaxy—right here.


End file.
